Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Libby Myers and I have been friends for quite some time, having been at university together, and over the years collaborated on various things, almost always in an ensemble setting. In late 2019 she asked me if I would write her a solo piece as part of a research project she was undertaking, exploring how interpersonal relationships and performer identity affect collaboration and commissioning processes.

After getting together a group composers who would write new works for her, she sent us a Get-To-Know-Libby pack - essentially a blog for our eyes only, full of diary entries of sorts: little anecdotes, a list of her favourite Joni Mitchell songs, photos of her childhood neighbourhood, describing her favourite clothes, explaining her love of a certain movement of a Bach lute suite, and why another piece is tainted by the memories of judge at a certain classical guitar competition saying her way of playing it was not the "right" way...

Amongst everything was a short anecdote about a moment earlier that year. Libby had spent half a year or so in Europe, doing artist residencies, attending conferences, etc. She recalled a memory from on her return, when her partner picked her up from the airport. They drove down the freeway, past the off-ramp that would have led to her parents' home (her childhood home), then past the off-ramp that led to the home she and had been in living in before her travels. They took a different off-ramp to her home but not yet her home.

It was mid-2020 when I started writing this piece. I was living back in suburban Brisbane, back in the home I grew up in. After having lived in London for a number of years at that point, I had become stuck back in Australia and the realisation was settling in that I probably wouldn't return to London like I had planned - having made another home elsewhere, my childhood home felt strangely less home-like.

Work Details

Year: 2021

Instrumentation: Guitar.

Duration: 6 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Commission note: Commissioned by Libby Myers.