Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Urban Machinations draws together a vast array of musical and extra-musical influences. The title is intentionally suggestive of many things such as busy urban-city life and industrial, mechanical and contemporary sounds and music. In so doing, the piece synthesises and invokes sounds of machines & industry, city sounds & landscapes and traffic noise. The work also incorporates sounds from forms of popular music such as rock & heavy metal, electronic, Hip-Hop & Trip-Hop, Drum & Bass, and elements of jazz and minimalism. The work has received national acclaim in the form of the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) Award for the 2006 3MBS National Composer Awards, and enthusiastic applause in performance by Melbourne's Orchestra Victoria under the baton of Richard Mills as part of the 2006 Symphony Australia Composer Development program.

Work Details

Year: 2006

Instrumentation: Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet (dbl. clarinet), 2 bassoons, contra-bassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (3 players), harp, piano, strings (12, 10, 8, 10, 6).

Duration: 8 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

First performance: by Orchestra Victoria, Richard Mills — 7 Jul 06. Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Centre Southbank, Melbourne

Winner of the APRA award at the 2006 3MBS National Composer Awards