
Lachlan Foster
Lachlan Foster is an undergraduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, with a keen interest in opera, theatre and electronic compositions. Lachlan also conducts chamber ensembles. His electronic work "Ashfall" was performed at Vivid 2019 with the composer-performer collective, Konzertprojekt. Lachlan has since parted with Konzertprojekt to pursue his own, individual projects, including a one-act musical centered around the judgment of humanity by a group of gods. He is also preparing a proposal for his Masters in 2021, in which he hopes to write a chamber opera.
"Make a Monster with Lachlan Foster" is a livestream dedicated to taking sounds people are familiar with and distorting them into new, vibrant creatures. Will they be beautiful, or will they be horrifying? Lachlan hopes to find out with the audience's help.
Jessica Scott
Sydney-based flutist Jessica Scott recently completed her Bachelor of Music in Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, studying Flute with James Kortum. In 2020, she has been accepted into the Royal Academy of Music, London to study a Postgraduate Certificate (graduating Master of Arts). In 2021, Jessica has been selected as a Performance Fellow for the soundSCAPE, Nief-Norf and Bang on a Can Summer Festivals. Past performances have included world premieres of works by Elia Bosshard, Josephine Macken and Keyna Wilkins, alongside ongoing collaborations with Elizabeth Jigalin and Alexis Weaver. Jessica is a core and founding member of Ensemble Muse, a modern music group who aim to bring a gender-balanced and diverse approach to the programming of new music. Representing the fragility and beauty of nature through improvisation forms a core part of Jessica’s artistic practice. Past performances on this theme have included the Yerrabingin Rooftop Concert Series (SCM Improvised Ensemble), and the Lost + Sound Series in 2019. Other performance highlights have included the Chicago Midwest Clinic, Siteworks Festival in Bundanon and Backstage Music Series. In 2018, Jessica received the Peter Richardson Memorial Prize and was the NSW Flute Society Open Champion. In 2018, she also performed as a Finalist in the Sydney Eisteddfod Drs Orchestra Scholarship and Fine Music Young Virtuoso Award.
Mark Oliveiro
Technology jerry-rigged. Noise to frequency ratio imbalance. The aesthetics of error abound. Epic tech, noise rituals and the ambience of a system overload. Oliveiro is interested in explorations that include reconstructing lost or imagined performance traditions. Current interests include modular synthesis, instrumental deconstructions and black midi - all of which are featured in selected works composed in the return to the roaring Twenties. Deconstructions in Noise and Midi ft. Saxophones, Synthesizers, Soundcards and Speakers.
Julian Day
Julian Day is an artist, composer and writer based in New York. Day has presented work at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Jewish Museum, Fridman Gallery, MASS MoCA, Royal Academy of Music, California Pacific Triennial, Asia Pacific Triennial, Prague Quadrennial, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Institute of Modern Art, Artspace, Sydney Opera House, Carriageworks and Performance Space. His music has featured at such festivals as Bang On A Can Marathon, MATA Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Spitalfields Music Festival, Queensland Music Festival, MONA FOMA and Liquid Architecture, performed by TILT Brass, Lisa Moore, Synergy Percussion, Australian String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Decibel, Intercurrent, The Song Company and Zubin Kanga. Since 2008 Day has facilitated Super Critical Mass, a ‘radical orchestra’ project that reimagines the traditional orchestra as a mobile and participatory vehicle for social interaction. In 2013 SCM opened the new Library of Birmingham, the largest such space in Europe, with a commission for 100 brass players featured on BBC Two’s The Culture Show. In 2011 SCM made the front page of the New York Times’ arts section for SWELTER. Day has won various awards including the ARTAND Credit Suisse Contemporary Art Award, Samstag Scholarship, Peggy Glanville Hicks Fellowship, and Australia Council and British Council fellowships. Beyond his art practice, Day is a writer, broadcaster and academic. He has curated many programs on experimental music on ABC and BBC radio, published with The MIT Press and Cambridge University Press, presented papers at Harvard, NYU, UCLA and Goldsmiths, and taught at Australian National University and Macquarie University. In 2018 he was accepted into the highly selective sound art MFA at Columbia University. His work has been acquired by Orange County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Justin Art House Museum, Wollongong Art Gallery and private collectors.
Michelle Nguyen
Michelle Nguyen is a composer and sound artist focusing on live processing and studio production. They are interested in exploring texture and how immersive sound worlds are created, as well as forming new ways to think about sound and music with current and upcoming technologies. Michelle has been a classically trained pianist since childhood and is interested in classical, ambient, dance, psychedelic, IDM, breakcore, experimental and improvised music. Having completed a Bachelor of Music with Honours (Composition) in 2018, Michelle has since been focussing on writing electronic music and incorporating elements of ambient, psychedelic, experimental, and noise music to create their soundscapes. Their work has been performed at Tilde New Music and Sound Art Festival and the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (BIFEM), and they occasionally perform at Make It Up Club. They also work in collaboration with Humphrey Cheung to create Wholegrain Ears, an interactive audio-visual installation. Together they have set up their work at many outdoor music festivals and nightclub events, including The Town, Esoteric Festival, Stacks On, and Newkind Festival. Currently they are creating with STRANGEkit, a multi-disciplinary artist collective from Monash Uni, and developing pieces for SIGNAL's Screen X Sound Commission.
Bree Van Reyk
Bree van Reyk is a drummer, percussionist, composer and sound artist who makes unconventional and tradition-challenging performance works. Her music resides in the intersection between contemporary classical, indie-rock and performance art and is equally warm-hearted, celebratory, and focussed on issues of equality. Bree has been commissioned by Sydney Festival, Sydney Chamber Opera, Ensemble Offspring, Canberra International Music Festival, Marrugeku, Urban Theatre Projects, Performance Space, Sydney Dance Company, The Letter String Quartet, Shaun Parker Company, fashion designer Bianca Spender, AGNSW, GOMA and the MCA. Her performance career includes tours and recordings with artists such as Gurrumul, Paul Kelly, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Synergy Percussion, Ensemble Offspring, Holly Throsby, Sarah Blasko, Marcus Whale, Laura Jean, Sally Seltmann, Toby Martin, Darren Hanlon, Grand Salvo, Katie Noonan, Oren Ambarchi + Martin Ng, and Anthony Pateras.
Justice Yeldham
What's been described as ‘a trumpet player trapped in a two dimensional universe’ is in fact the utterly unique music of Lucas Abela aka Justice Yeldham, a maverick improviser who performs on shards of broken glass. Since its invention in 2003, the glass has evolved from a means to create free-noise cacophonies into a rudimentary instrument that produces an organic form of outsider electronica. Due to the volatility of the material combined with the ecstatic nature of early performances (that tended to end in bloodshed) the instrument has been somewhat maligned as a shtick by some who wrongly assumed the show is merely screaming into glass. These assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth, as in fact as an instrument the glass is incredibly versatile and acoustically most of he vocal techniques employed are barely audible. Behind the amplified din, closer observation reveals the shards are played somewhat like a bellow-less saxophone, vibrating lips subtlety transmitting micro-sonic vibrations into the pane. This single source of audio then feeds into an array of parallel effects chains giving the music an illusion of ghostly accompaniment (also wrongly ascribed to backing tapes / looping pedals). Once amplified they come together to form dense layers of anomalous music which David Rees described in The New York Times as sounding like " John Coltrane playing a volcano".
Konzertprojekt
Konzertprojekt is a new music collective with inclusivity at our core. Focusing on emerging artists, we curate concerts which feature composers and performers of diverse genders, cultural backgrounds, sexualities and abilities, and seek to cultivate a vibrant community of living music strengthened by the different voices it presents.
Konzertprojekt began as a group of student composers and performers studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and have evolved into a dynamic team of students and graduates dedicated to expanding the bounds of live performance to showcase chamber, audiovisual and electroacoustic music in all its forms.
Our Light Qualities series was featured in the Vivid Sydney Festival in 2019, and in 2018 we were a recipient of the Flute Society of New South Wales grant. We have worked with a wide range of emerging ensembles, including Ensemble Terra, The Judgment of Paris and Quart-Ed, and commissioned many of our compositional peers. We look forward to sharing our upcoming projects, concerts and collaborations with you.
Will Hansen
Will Hansen (b.1997) is a Sydney-based double bassist, improviser and composer. A co-founder of SPIRAL Ensemble and regular member of Ensemble Onsombl (always spelled a different way) and Ensemble Apex (Syd), Will has performed across Australia at venues such as the Sydney Opera House, Sydney City Recital Hall, Sydney Town Hall, Palau de la Musica Catalina, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the CCEC Chengdu, China. Will has performed as a soloist and ensemble member alongside a number of groups including Ensemble Offspring, the Australian String Quartet and The Living Room Theatre. An avid New Music enthusiast, he has commissioned and premiered a great number of new works for solo Double Bass by local composers including Josephine Macken, Sarah Elise Thompson, Solomon Frank and Oscar Smith. In 2019, Will toured Spain with the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony under the baton of Dr. John Lynch, and Chengdu, China, with the Conservatorium’s Modern Music Ensemble under Daryl Pratt, graduating with a BMus in Music Performance later in the year. Will has additionally made appearances at Ensemble Offspring’s Hatched Academy Open Mic Night, as a composer for the Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, and at 107 Projects Redfern with Spiral. Will has been nominated as Ensemble Offspring’s 2020 Hatched Academy Associate Artist, and will perform a number of new works in concerts alongside the Ensemble and as a soloist.
Freya Schack-Arnott
Freya Schack-Arnott is an Danish/Australian contemporary cellist who enjoys a multi-faceted career as a performer, improviser, composer and curator; ranging from contemporary classical repertoire to experimental, electronics, popular and cross-disciplinary art forms. Schack-Arnott regularly performs with Australia's leading new music ensembles, including ELISION Ensemble and Ensemble Offspring. Her curatorial roles include co-founder and curator of the regular 'Opus Now' music series, an ongoing project exploring relationships between the music of today and classical string quartets, and co-curator of the Rosenberg Museum, together with violinist and improviser Jon Rose. Past curation has included co-curator of the improvised music festival ‘NOW Now’ and monthly series. Schack-Arnott has performed in a number of festivals and major venues across Australia, Asia and Europe: National Concert Hall, Taipei; JazzSpot Candy, Tokyo; Copenhagen Jazz festival; Sydney Festival; Melbourne International Arts Festival; Vivid, Sydney; Dark Mofo, Hobart; Supersense, Melbourne; No New Noise, Melbourne; Now Now Festival, Sydney; Baiame's Ngunnhu Festival, Brewarrina; Day for Night, Liveworks, Sydney; Melbourne Fringe; SIMA Jazz Festival, Sydney; Ensembles and artists Schack-Arnott has performed with in recent years, include: Elision (AUS), Ensemble Offspring (AUS), Speak Percussion (AUS), Oren Ambarchi (AUS), Eugene Chadbourne (USA), Liquid Architecture (AUS), James Rushford (AUS), Ensemble Midtvest (DK), Bae Il Dong (KOR), Brian Ritchie (US), Wilfred brothers (AUS), Jon Rose (AUS), Clayton Thomas (AUS), Sophia Brous (AUS), Peter Knight (AUS), Fate Maps (AUS), Schack-Arnott duo (AUS), Bonniesongs (AUS), Indianerne (DK) and Missy Higgins (AUS).
Damien Ricketson
Sound Touch: Music you can Feel
Sound Touch is a showing of a new work-in-progress conceived by composer Damien Ricketson, with director Sally Blackwood, percussionist Bree van Reyk and sound-designer Bob Scott. What do you hear when you listen with your body? Imagine a music that bypasses your brain and penetrates your skin. A music that plays upon your nervous system like an Aeolian harp, as though you are a set of sympathetic strings stirred into resonance by distant touch. Sound Touch is a performance-work exploring vibration and the body. Sitting somewhere between a musical performance and an outlandish therapy session, join us live from the Sydney Conservatorium as we guide you through a tune-up, a sonic massage and a sound bath that will leave your body sensitive and attuned to the world around you. Sound Touch is a playful and provocative exploration of music’s capacity to affect one’s character. Traversing references from ancient acoustic myths and conspiracy theories to emerging medical technologies and sonic weapons, this enveloping experience is a sensory lesson in the vibratory nature of existence and the delicate art of listening.
Artists
Damien Ricketson - composer
Sally Blackwood - director
Bree van Reyk - percussion
Bob Scott - sound designer
Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears. (Pauline Oliveros)
Ensemble Terra
Ensemble Terra is a Sydney-based chamber ensemble, focused on the promotion and performance of Australian music. We aim to encourage and support composers, performers and listeners to immerse themselves in the diverse Australian musical landscape.
Katherine Howarth
Katherine Howarth is a clarinettist from Orange, NSW, now based in Sydney. She has recently completed a Bachelor of Music Performance in clarinet at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, achieving First-Class Honours. During her time at the Sydney Con, she studied clarinet and bass clarinet with Ms Susan Newsome, as well as performing in masterclasses with international clarinettists Jose Franch-Ballester and Dimitri Ashkenazy. Katherine also had the opportunity to travel to the U.K with the assistance of Sydney Conservatorium’s Vice Chancellor's Global Mobility Scholarship to have lessons with Robert Hill, Janet Hilton, Richard Hosford and Timothy Lines. As part of her undergraduate degree, Katherine was principal clarinettist of the Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra (2019), Wind Symphony (2019), and toured to China with the SCM Modern Music Ensemble as bass clarinettist (2019).
Katherine is an active collaborator and performer, working with emerging local composers and composer collective Kozertprojekt to promote and bring to life new Australian works. Works Katherine has premiered include Deja – for Clarinet and Saxophone Quartet; Liam Mulligan (2019), French Earl Grey – for Bass Clarinet; Christine Pan, Left On Seen – for Wind Quintet and Recorder Quartet; Christine Pan (2019), Walk Towards The Fire – Wind Quintet; Lachlan Foster, Birdsong Revisited; Gabrielle Cadenhead (2018), Etendue Numerique – for Clarinet in Bb and Electronics; Connor Hutchinson (2017) and In The Face of Agony – Sophie Van Dijk (2016).
Jasmine Mills
Jasmine-Jade Mills is a classical saxophonist who has just completed her Bachelor of Performance at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 2015, she graduated from the Australian Institute of Music, where she received a scholarship for a Bachelor of Classical Music.Some of her past teachers include Dr Michael Duke, Andrew Smith, Dr Benjamin Carey and Nick Russionello.
In June 2018, Jasmine premiered a new concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Orchestra titled “Rapture” by Joshua Winestock, with the Sydney University Wind Orchestra. As part of the Sydney Conservatorium Saxophone Orchestra, Jasmine went on tour to Canberra to perform at the National Portrait Gallery. Other tours she has participated on this year include the “Kurt Weill Inclusion Project” tour to Wollongong, and the Sydney Conservatorium Modern Music Ensemble tour to Newcastle. Earlier in 2018, Jasmine performed with the ‘Coil Saxophone quartet’ in a masterclass with Sabine Meyer and the Alliage Quintett as part of Musica Viva.
In 2019, Jasmine went on tour with the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony to Spain, and worked with Claude Delangle and Vincent David at the University of Gap saxophone academy in France.