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Damian Barbeler (Festival Curator)

Damian Barbeler is the creator of the hiberNATION Festival. He is an award-winning composer and multimedia artist recognised for his playful artistic style and lush, emotional creations inspired by textures and patterns from nature.

He regularly collaborates with colleagues from diverse fields including film, architecture, software design, media arts, dance, and incorporates visual, sculptural and light elements with all his music.

His work often emphasises tactile experiences of physical places and relationships. His work (with artist Tim Jetis) Visiting Eucalyptus is a good example, where 6 months of travelling, photographing Eucalyptus trees resulted in a concert work, installation, book, film and website.

Damian has twice received the ‘Recommended Work’ award at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers and was a finalist in the Toru Takemitsu Prize in Tokyo in 2008.

June WAS to see the premiere of his major trans-music work “Paper Forest” for Jane Sheldon and Continuum Saxophone Quartet, in the Dangrove art space in Sydney. But don't worry...  that piece is on it's way soon...  somehow!

Lewis Mosley

Lewis Mosley is a composer and guitarist working on Gadigal Land. His works often stand at the intersection between composition and installation art, with a focus on the sculptural and performative aspects of the music. Being a guitarist, Lewis has played in played in bands in the Sydney music scene from a young age; an influence that is present in many of his works.

riverkid/Niall FitzSimons

Niall aka riverkid is a hip hop beatmaker and DJ, a singer and trombonist, ethnomusicologist and a radio host with Radio Skid Row. He has released several mixtapes of 'lofi beats to sleep/study/relax to', including 2020's 'dreams+memories', leaning heavily on samples from his collection of cheesy light orchestral pop covers records so popular with middle Australia through the mid-late 20th century and clogging op shop record shelves across the country. Full of string flourishes, chimes, harps, bells and warm organs, his lofi beats are like the soft embrace we've all been missing. For the festival he'll be trying to translate these beats to a live context for the first time, or maybe just doing some jammy voice and trombone loops or maybe both who knows.

Claire Edwardes

Internationally acclaimed percussion soloist, chamber musician and artistic director of Sydney based maverick new music group, Ensemble Offspring, Claire Edwardes has been described by the press as a ‘sorceress of percussion’ performing with ‘spellbinding intensity’ and ‘graceful virtuosity’. Her award-winning performances combine a theatrical energy with charismatic and original interpretations bringing to life the varied array of music she performs. Graduating as Student of the Year in 1997 from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where Daryl Pratt was her teacher, she went on to win the coveted Symphony Australia Young Performers Award in 1999. She subsequently relocated to the Netherlands to undertake a Masters Degree at the Rotterdam and Amsterdam Conservatories under Richard Jansen, Peter Prommel and Jan Pustjens. Resident there for seven years, she was the recipient of many international awards and prizes including first place at the 2000 Tromp Percussion Competition and 2001 Llangollen International Instrumentalist. Claire was the 2005 MCA/Freedman Fellow and she is the three-time winner (2016, 2012, 2007) of the APRA Art Music Award for Excellence by an Individual for her contribution to Australian music. In 2014 she was granted a prestigious Australia Council Music Fellowship and in 2016 Ensemble Offspring won the APRA Art Music Award for Excellence by an Organisation. Claire has performed concertos with all of the Australian and New Zealand orchestras as well as numerous European orchestras and has premiered works by an array of composers worldwide such as Harrison Birtwistle, James McMillan, Matthew Hindson, Elena Kats-Chernin and Matthew Shlomowitz. In her role as Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring she programs and performs to the highest level, some of the most innovative and cutting-edge new music being presented in the world today. Claire is endorsed by Mike Balter Mallets and Adams Percussion. She teaches percussion at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and maintains a busy concert schedule throughout Australia and abroad.

James Hazel

James Hazel is an artist/composer/researcher (and aspiring neo-luddite) particularly interested in resistant text and sonic practices (and making in general) that emerge within the conditions of neo-liberal pre(care)ity - as well as the way in which neo-liberal imaginaries and network-configurations a(e)ffect ontologies and intimacies. In this space, Hazel's practice involves installation, performance-texts, video and assemblage, while working with materiality such as sound, noise, language, and found-objects/subjects. Of late, Hazel's practice is predominantly led by collaborative encounters with resonating-comrades. James is seeking long walks on the beach; thick post-internet altruisms; mysticisms and ritualisation; and digital ensoundings and archives - like the ones he has been involved in making: contscore.com; adsrzine.com  (w/ Elia Bosshard and Sonya Hollowell) and "The Opera Company" (w/ Joe Franklin and Tina Stefanou). 

Gabrielle Cadenhead

Gabrielle Cadenhead is an emerging writer and composer who blurs the line between music and poetry. She regularly weaves together both her disciplines, and is interested in the symbiosis of creativity, activism and faith. She is in her final year of studying English and Composition at the University of Sydney and Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Gabrielle is a founding member of Konzertprojekt composer collective and has composed for Vivid Sydney, Fluteworthy, Gondwana Choirs, Sydney Chamber Opera musicians and Sydney Youth Orchestras. In 2018, she performed Echo for poetry and solo flute at Extended Play New Music Festival, which also received an Honourable Mention in the Flute New Music Consortium’s Composition Competition. Her poetry and fiction have been published in ARNA and the University of Sydney Student Anthology, and she writes for CutCommon Magazine.

Rhys LIttle

Rhys Little (b.1998) is a Sydney Based composer, performer and conductor with a young but packed-full career in many sides of the music industry. An alumni of the Conservatorium High School, he studied composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (University of Sydney) under the tutelage of Liza Lim, Damien Ricketson, Gerard Brophy and others. He holds a Bachelor of Music (Composition) with 1st Class Honours. Rhys’s work as a composer overlaps many genres of ‘classical’ music, such that no two works are the same. His work is at once modernist, romantic, sonorist, calm, agitated, structured, free and always unyieldingly humanist. Some pieces are multimodal, involving spoken text and electronics, where others are purely acoustic. All of Rhys’s music is concerned with portraying the subtlety of human existence and experience. Rhys has worked with Sydney Chamber Opera, Sydney Conservatorium Ensembles as a composer, conductor, euphonium/trombonist, and sung with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. He is a founding member student-run new music initiative Konzertprojekt.

Alexis Weaver

Alexis Weaver is an electroacoustic composer and sound artist based in Sydney, Australia. Alexis draws on field recordings of animals, insects and everyday objects to create unique and adventurous radiophonic and acousmatic works. While her principal interest lies in composing fixed-media acousmatic music, she has also composed soundtracks for animation, short videos, radio, theatre, and dance. Alexis’ work has been broadcast in Australia, France and Scotland, as well as featured on RMN Classical’s Electroacoustic and Beyond II (2017). While studying a Bachelor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Alexis was awarded People’s Choice Award and First Place in the 2015 and 2016 University of Sydney Verge Awards respectively for her acousmatic works. In January 2018, Alexis was awarded the National Council of Women’s Australia Day Prize for her research undertaken during her Honours year on the visibility and practice of female electroacoustic composers. She is currently a Master of Music candidate at the Sydney Conservatorium, where she also teaches composition. Her research has focused on the transferral of high-quality acousmatic music to everyday, portable diffusion systems – naming this new movement Small Diffusion. Alexis is also co-founder of composer collective lost+sound, who in 2018 launched a concert series celebrating emerging artists working in experimental music.

Frank Dwyer

Frank Dwyer is an emerging artist currently studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the final year of a Bachelor of Music (Composition). While still in the infancy of his career, Frank has been commissioned for a community-oriented project in partnership with the Inner West Council to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Greenway Art Prize. As a composer, Frank works in many different mediums, writing for chamber ensembles, choir, electroacoustic and electronic ensembles, as well as performance art pieces. His works often incorporate themes of community solidarity, political agitation and urban ecosystems.

Maddy Briggs

Maddy Briggs is an emerging composer based in Sydney. Her pieces often create a soundscape, with real sourced sounds peverted by electronic means, in order to create a unique and intriguing listening experience. Her interest lies in translating ideas across different artistic mediums, as well as using composition as a device to navigate ideas of complex emotion or social unrest. Currently studying Composition and English at The University of Sydney and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, she became a member of the composer collective Konzertprojekt in 2020. She has also been commissioned Vivid Sydney 2019 and been featured the 2018 Extended Play Festival.

Kun Ho Lim

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.

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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.

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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.

Freya Howard

Freya is a filmmaker, writer, musician and innovator with a love for connecting transdisciplinary dots. They have spent the past 5 years working in a range of films, music videos and webseries' jumping predominately between Assistant Directing and Production Design. Freya also spent the bulk of 2020 researching the influence that cinematic music can have on our emotional experiences of episodic memory, and how this can be used to treat overgeneralised and biased memory-patterns. Freya has a love for contradiction and subverting audience expectations, and also a deep interest in the things that influence our lenses of experience. What changes the way we interpret the world around us? How much creative control do we have over this? Since 2017, Freya has been working in transdisciplinary teams to solve complex problems with creative methods as part of their degree in “Creative Intelligence and Innovation” – particularly delving into design thinking, systems thinking and alternative economies. This has led to opportunities working with clients like SBS, Zenith Media, Telstra, Local Government and Transport for NSW on problems ranging from integrating accessible urban agriculture in Sydney LGAs to re-designing streaming service interfaces, to re-imagining employee upskilling. Since graduating, Freya has also had the opportunity to join the UTS Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation as a Casual Academic. Freya’s education has also been a global one! In 2018, Freya was trained in floor managing for live broadcast at Oxford Brookes University, in 2019 Freya spent a couple of weeks in Mongolia assisting in the development of Social Work and Community Development ties between the University of Sydney and the University of Ulaanbaatar, and in the beginning of 2020 (pre COVID), Freya spent a month on a global studio in Auroville, India – delving into the complex realities of intentional communities and problem solving in alternative contexts. More recently, Freya has been diving back into storytelling – their focus this year has been on re-discovering what makes a good story, the parameters of storytelling and the ins and outs of imaginative immersion.

Oscar de la Sawyer

Circuit bending and feedback, home made electronics.

Skarlette (Sophia Kalo)

Sophia Kalo is a young multi-instrumentalist and emerging composer, songwriter, and producer hailing from Western Sydney, and currently residing in Melbourne.

Through her alter ego of Skarlette, Sophia expresses intensely personal experiences, exploring themes of heartbreak and desire, and the effects of grappling with mental health on her reality. Drawing sonic influences from modern film composition and an expansive variety of local and international electronic artists, Skarlette presents emotionally charged works that immerse the listener in a world of poetic lyricism and intimate textural landscapes.

Pili Ciarrocca

Argentinian visual artist (if that’s a word that I can be categorised with) born and raised in Buenos Aires. I had been into art since I have self-awareness, always willing to create no matter what resources I would have. At the moment I am just an explorer and a learner that is willing to find its own voice. I am currently recreating Old master’s drawings mostly done with the simplicity of a ball pen and transforming their composition into abstract forms.

Jane Aubourg

Jane is a Wollongong based composer, violinist, and maker. Her performances, compositions and installations are often based around looping, and her music draws from folk, minimalism, and experimental music.

She also writes, plays, and explores with the award-winning collective 'the music box project', who commission and perform music outside the usual order of things.

She finds loops and textures fascinating, enjoys improvising & collaborating with friends, and making things with her hands.

Angus Bowring

The latest voice you've never heard of, poems, lullabies and love-songs, lyricism leading the show. Think John Cooper Clarke and Tim Rogers quipping over many a bottle. Dylan Thomas might get a look in as well. He's a straight laced fall from grace.

Write songs and perform with FLTRS and Spruced Moose.

Courtney Cousins

Courtney Cousins is a composer, flautist and vocalist, currently in her third year at the Sydney Conservatorium, in a Bachelor of Music (Composition). Courtney has loves messing around with new sounds, whatever the medium, where it be instrumental, vocal, electroacoustic or a blend. She is interested in different ideas surrounding music aesthetics, and meaning in music. She has a great love for literature, and is particularly interested in music as a mode of story-telling.

In April last year, she was commissioned by Backstage Music to write High Tides, a short experimental work for flute for Lamorna Nightingale, and her fanfare Showtime! was performed by the QYO as part of Artology’s annual Composition competition. Courtney loves choral music especially, and Courtney was a semi-finalist in the 2020 Walter Hussey Composition Competition for her choral work A cold place. She is a member of the Conservatorium Chamber Choir, the Sydney Graduate Choir, and was a Vocal Scholar at St Stephen’s Uniting from 2019 to 2021. She is also a member of the student choir Ad Lib, based at Sydney Con.

Courtney is also a teacher of flute, composition and music theory, and has taught both privately and within schools.

Isabella Rahme