Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Curated and directed by Louise Devenish (alum 2003, percussion), this program traces a decade of composers listening to science—Bree van Reyk (alum 1998), Kate Milligan (ANAM Set 2022), Augusta Read Thomas, Thomas Meadowcroft (ANAM Set 2021).

Bree van Reyk's How We Fell opens the program, born from handwritten letters climate scientists wrote in answer to one question: how does it feel? Devenish calls it "an ongoing, asynchronous conversation around daily life at this point during the climate crisis." For this performance, ANAM musicians have folded their own reflections into the score.

Kate Milligan's Nocturne I builds on a single tam-tam and the flicker of bioluminescent algae—photographs of Pyrocystis fusiformis translated, flash by flash, into gesture.

Augusta Read Thomas's Helix Spirals III: SPIRALS: life force turns toward 1957 and the Meselson-Stahl experiment, the discovery that changed how we understand DNA. The music replicates as the molecule does—material renewing itself, again and again.

At the centre: the world premiere of Thomas Meadowcroft's Catastrophes Explained to Children, which takes the risk projections and disaster warnings of the climate crisis and tips them into absurdism—continuing his long study of memory in twenty-first-century Australia.

Bree VAN REYK How We Fell from Climate Notes
Thomas MEADOWCROFT Catastrophes Explained to Children (world premiere)
Kate MILLIGAN Nocturne I for solo tam-tam (world premiere)
Augusta Read THOMAS HELIX SPIRAL III: SPIRALS: life force for string quartet

Louise Devenish director / percussion
ANAM Musicians

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

Featured artists

• Music of Bree van Reyk
• Music of Thomas Meadowcroft
• Music of Kate Milligan