Resonate Blogs
Articles by sound artists, composers, performers and teachers discussing contemporary practice - you can also browse our archive of all blog articles
River Life – Baiame’s Ngunnhu Festival in Brewarrina
by Claire Edwardes, Jason Noble, Freya Schack-Arnott and Lamorna Nightingale
Field Report: Sonic Mmabolela
by Vicki Hallett
Vicki Hallett writes about her participation in the Sonic Mmabolela residency in late 2017. A new work Earthscape by Hallett, Ros Bandt and Jem Savage will premiere in Geelong on 4 May.
The Drowners
by Andrew Ford
In my sequence of songs, The Drowners, a surfer struggles against the rip (or dreams he does); a drowning man is dragged back from the cold North Sea by his wife, as his laughing child watches from the beach; a toddler drowns in a well in the 19th-century colony of Augusta, Western Australia; grieving parents are visited by the wraiths of their drowned children; a man, out of his depth all his life, drowns when he swims 'too far out'; the King of Naples is believed to lie at the bottom of the sea, his eyes having turned to pearls. You might be forgiven for thinking I have an obsession with drowning.
Making the Weight of Light
by Nigel Featherstone
What happens when an Australian fiction writer collaborates on a new song cycle with a composer of new music? Nigel Featherstone, an Australian writer of contemporary fiction, shares his journey.
The new song cycle by Featherstone and James Humberstone, The Weight of Light, will have its world premiere on 3-4 March at the Street Theatre in Canberra. The work will also be performed at the Goulburn Regional Conservatorium on 10 March 2018.
Still Night: Music in Poetry
by Andrea Keller
Andrea Keller writes about her song cycle Still Night: Music in Poetry - a meditation on sentiments of death, grief and loss. The 60-minute cycle incorporates words from tenth-century Japanese poems through to Keats, Whitman, Yeats, Proust, Teasdale and contemporary Australian poetry. The albumis now available from Bandcamp, Keller's website and Jazzhead.
On composition
by Cathy Milliken
Art music practice in today's Australia is a rich and diverse field, and pathways to the profession via education and further professional development are fluid and varied. The language we use, on the other hand, doesn't accurately reflect our contemporary practice. We also need to be able to communicate effectively with those outside our sector. This is why the AMC is commissioning a series of articles about being a composer today, for publication over spring and summer 2017-2018.
Article by Cathy Milliken is the third one in the series.
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