Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

14 Aug 2018 They Find Their Way In by Sonya Holowell

Improviser and experimental vocalist Sonya Holowell is one of the artists involved with the Resonant Bodies Festival at Carriageworks on 31 August - 1 September 2018. In this article, she explains and demonstrates some of her techniques and influences by analysing a recent solo improvised performance

8 Jan 2020 Opera Summit: Decolonising the High Arts, part A by Sonya Holowell

Sonya Holowell took part in the Gender Equity and Diversity in Opera Summit, organised by the AMC, together with the Australia Council for the Arts and APRA AMCOS. The list of participants in this initial summit included composers, singers, producers, and administrators representing a wide range of expertise and organisations.Sonya Holowell's report will be published in two parts, with part B to follow.

24 Feb 2020 Decolonising the High Arts Part B by Sonya Holowell

Following on from where I left off in Part A, I wish now to share some of the things that came up for me after attending the recent Gender Equity and Diversity in Opera Summit.

The summit (and the previous part A of this report) concluded with some questions about the nature of change itself. My thoughts also circle around this idea of 'change', but rather than asking "what do we want to change?" a more pertinent question to me is what do we want to leave intact? [...]

29 Oct 2019 The Song Company: Nineteen to the Dozen by Margaret Koulaouzos

The Song Company's Nineteen to the Dozen program premiered on Tuesday 22 October in Sydney, and this exciting mix of early music and the brand-new is currently touring nationally. The brief to 19 participating composers was: no title, no words, and no explicit program note - i.e. to do without the usual handles for a composer of vocal or choral music. Each composer created a miniature soundworld from scratch, as a contract to 'old' works in the same program. For this article, The Song Company's Margaret Koulaouzos has compiled thoughts by seven of participating composers.