Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Great question. I try to immerse myself in the other pieces on the program before I start writing. The Mozart Piano Concerto was a big influence on me, but mostly in a contextual way. As I was listening, I started to imagine Mozart's life at the time of writing his piece. It was February 1785, wintertime in Vienna. I imagined a bright crystalline sky, and the crunch of snow underfoot, and I wondered whether you we hear winter in that piece. Then I thought about the quality of winter that we are now experiencing down under - how our winters are changing. On one level, my piece interrogates our fragile human existence, and the changing biodiversity and climate challenges we currently face. As a title, 'DuskLit Meditations' refers to a reflective engagement with the ecological crisis.

Tell us about your piece DuskLit Meditations.

This piece blends field recordings made by young people in central Victoria with live string orchestra, creating musical space to reflect on the special qualities of our natural environment.

This work encompasses field recordings from young people in climate-affected communities. Tell us more about this process and how you craft these sounds into a work for orchestra?

For this project we worked with young people at Candlebark School, in central Victoria. Through a series of workshops with collaborator Zoë Barry, we explored local school environs and favourite places that they wanted to share, and supported them to record these sites. This project is part of a larger venture with Kathryn Bowen (Melbourne Climate Futures) called Sonic Youth, where we aim to encourage a sense of hope and agency for young people in the face of ecological change, and to give them a voice in the conversation as we face these challenges.

Once students had recorded their favourite place, I then set about weaving their soundscapes into a shape that could be 'performed' in concert alongside string orchestra. The blending of soundscape with orchestra is an interesting challenge! The key is to give the orchestra and the field recordings each some 'space' in the texture and time. Both elements - orchestra and field recordings - should be robust enough to exist on their own, but also flexible enough to work in counterpoint with each other. The orchestra is deliberately the dominant player here, though. I was interested in casting Sophie Rowell (MCO Artistic Director and concertmaster) as songbird who would integrate the acoustic language with the recorded natural environments. I live in leafy suburban Melbourne where there's a tonne of birdlife. As I was writing the piece, a lone magpie would take up full song at 2am, and would sing for hours. In the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, I started to imagine what a response to this magpie would sound like, and you hear this in Sophie's line.

The climate crisis affects us all, and art that reflects and comments on this is crucial. How do you balance the priorities of art making, story-telling and social justice through your music? 

Ultimately we are in the business of creating music, and creating music that is appealing, powerful, and inspiring. When music has the power to move people, then I believe it can effect change for the greater good.

Find out more about Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and their upcoming concert featuring Miriama Young's DuskLit at mco.org.au