Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

[Updated 6 Nov: Indigenous Composer Initiative podcast link added.]

ABC Classic FM is again celebrating the annual Australian Music Month, with room on the airwaves for broadcasts and concerts of Australian works. Simultaneously, the now 10-year-old New Waves podcast celebrates its birthday by adding to its already impressive track record of documenting and making available brand-new Australian works, from premieres and other performances to festival specials, interviews and content from the ABC's archives.

This week's New Waves podcast is particularly significant, as it will be the first broadcast of the final concert (3 August 2017) of the AMPlify Indigenous Composer Initiative, with Ensemble Offspring premiering works by the five program participants Rhyan Clapham, Brenda Gifford, Tim Gray, Troy Russell and Elizabeth Sheppard. (More information about the Indigenous Composer Initiative and the final concert - read also Chris Sainsbury's recent article on Resonate).

Otherwise, the first week of Australian Music Month has an Elena Kats-Chernin theme, with the composer's works broadcast in the Mornings as well as Evenings. On Thursday 2 November, the 8pm concert will feature the May premiere of the work Big Rhap (MSO/Bramwell Tovey), and Saturday 4 November will see the live broadcast (Evenings, from 7:30pm) of Elena Kats-Chernin's 60th birthday concert at Sydney's City Recital Hall (repeated on Sunday). On Sunday 5 November, we'll also hear a broadcast of Carl Vine's Five Hallucinations at 12pm.

The second week of the month, starting on Monday 6 November, will feature a new work by Samatha Wolf (at 8pm) and a MSO concert with Kats-Chernin's work (at 10pm), and a Keys to Music program about Miriam Hyde. Tuesday's late evening concert will also feature Elena Kats-Chernin's work. On Wednesday 8 November, the 8pm concert broadcast will be the Adelaide Symphony's Sound of Australia concert from 6 April, with works by Barton, Edwards, O'Boyle and Sculthorpe), and the 10pm concert the recent 'Dream Sequence' program (15 October) by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, with music by Brett Dean, James Hullick, Liza Lim, and Erkki Veltheim.

New podcast from late on Thursday 9 November will be Erik Griswold's Water Pushes Sand by the Australian Art Orchestra and Clocked Out Duo. Worth making a note of are broadcasts of premieres of Mary Finsterer's opera Biographica and Kate Neal's Permission to Speak on Sunday 12 November (Sunday Opera, from 7pm).

Programming details for the whole month are being finalised, but also in the planning is an 'A-Z of Australian Music' in the Breakfast time slot, as well as presenter picks and anniversaries of major Australian works in Afternoons. Composers featured during the third week will include Holly Harrison (Tuesday 14 November at 10pm) and Lachlan Skipworth (15 November 10pm) as well as Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Keys to Music, Monday 13 November at 7pm). Podcast for the third week will be Jon Rose's ' The Rosenberg Museum' (16 November).

The week starting on Monday 20 November will include Paul Stanhope's Trombone Concerto (Saturday 25 November at 2pm) and Carl Vine's Cello Sonata (26 November at 5pm). Evenings from Monday to Friday will feature music by Andrew Ford, also celebrating his 60th birthday in 2017. There will be broadcasts of concerts by Plexus (20 November at 8pm - Broadstock, McCombe, O'Brien, Sheng) and ASO (21 November at 8pm - incl. Brett Dean). Sunday Opera (27 November at 7pm) will be Malcolm Williamson's Our Man in Havana. Podcast for the week is yet to be confirmed.

The week starting on Monday 27 November will feature an Ensemble Offspring program (29 November at 10pm), Liza Lim's string quartet The Weaver's Knot (30 November at 10pm), and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (Julian Yu's work on Saturday 2 December from 2pm). The New Waves podcast to be released on Thursday 30 November will be 'Elision at 30'.

> Please note that the program details listed above may change. Check the latest details on the ABC Classic FM website, including updates on the Australian music blog.