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Wendy Suiter : Associate Artist

Wendy (aka Ceridwen) Suiter values collaboration and community. She believes art music should engage with the real world, rather than being separate from our every day lives. Art music provides a means to reflect on, and listen to, the creatures, ourselves, and the environment we all inhabit.

Random Audio Sample: Carlin : piano trio by Wendy Suiter, from the CD Rear vision


Photo of Wendy Suiter

Wendy (aka Ceridwen) Suiter was born a Scorpio in 1954, south of the Yarra River, on Buon Wurrung land, in Victoria, Australia. She is currently residing in Australia, and is a full member of the Melbourne Composer's League.

Wendy uses her professional name Ceridwen Suiter primarily when she creates and performs her environmental audio and other digital music compositions.

Although she studied classical guitar throughout secondary school, and enjoyed playing with the consumer-level recording and playback equipment available in the 1960s, she went on to study economics and mathematics. This lead to research and policy work in women's services and later work in labour economics and financial management. However, in her mid-thirties she decided to follow her passion for music, through formal study of music composition.

After majoring in instrumental and electronic music composition at La Trobe University, she completed her Honours year in acoustic music composition at Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. She has gained an MCA-R from University of Wollongong specialising in vocal music for performance in both human acoustic and acousmatic domains.

Finally, obtaining a PhD from Australian National University titled Fuzzy IDEAS: Using Fuzzy Logic to Make Sense of Avant-garde Music. Wendy's research uses fuzzy logic principles to explore the compositional influences that impact how avant-garde music makes sense to listeners, across both instrumental and computer music. Her research has been presented at both national and international conferences and included in academic publications.

Wendy Suiter's music is primarily concerned with the timbral qualities of instruments and sampled sounds as key compositional elements. She has been influenced by the intellectual rigour of both counterpoint and serial techniques, but is searching for a way to include the passion of the Romantics through the use of 'grand gesture' and richness of timbre, register, and texture, as significant elements of expression.

Wendy's music has been performed live in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and regional Australia in a wide variety of settings, from art galleries and dedicated concert spaces, to cafes and outdoor performances. Her electronic music has featured in several festivals in Florida, California and New York, as well as in Australia.

Professional achievements to date include a variety of soundscapes to accompany art exhibitions and installations, publication of brass music Paul Keating by Redhouse Press, publication of chamber music, choral and vocal music by Wirripang, and the broadcast of her piano trio Carlin on ABC Classic FM, and inclusion on CDs of Australian flute music, Australian chamber music, and Australian computer music.

Wendy Suiter has been awarded a 2020 Melbourne Composer's League/Panoramic music commission for Waiting (song for countertenor, acoustic instruments and sampler) live streamed performance in 2021; the
2013 Centenary of Canberra/National Rural Women's Association Composer in Residence; the 2009 Fellowship of Australian Composers (FAC) Composition Prize for her electro-acoustic work the sea leaves ear-shells…; the 2002 Piano Trio Composition Prize (Adelaide) for Carlin; and the 1997 Darebin Composer in Residence at the Jika Jika Community Centre, Melbourne.

As a community musician, Wendy Suiter was inaugural Music Director of POW (Performing Older Women's) Circus, Melbourne for 6 years, and regular workshop presenter at the Darebin Music Feast and The Heathcote Festival where participants have played her music especially composed for the Federation Handbells.


Wendy Suiter — current to July 2023

Studied with

John Whiteoak (1993 - 1994)

Allan Walker (1994 - 1995)

John McCaughey (1995 - 1996)

Rainer Linz (1996 - 1997)

Graeme Koehne (2002 - 2003)

Stephen Whittington (2002 - 2003)

Greg Schiemer (2005 - 2007)

Houston Dunleavy (2006 - 2011)

 

Selected Commissions

  Work Commission Details
SINUATUS : female choir (2022) In Memory of Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Institute
Waiting : countertenor voice (2021) Creative Victoria through Panoramic Music and Melbourne Composer's League
Digital sheet music sample Untrained Worms (solo piano) (2021) Commissioned by Raymond Shon and the Melbourne Composer's League