New chamber orchestra work with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: Komorebi

Watch the premiere of my new piece, Komorebi, for a chamber-sized Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by the wonderful Leonard Weiss. The concert also featured new MSO commissions by Zinia Chan, Robert McIntyre and Rachel Meyer. This piece was commissioned through the Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program, supported by the Cybec Foundation.

It was an honour to write one of fifty fanfares commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. My piece, Pride for brass ensemble, is a musical shout from the rooftops that everyone from the LGBTQIA+ community should be welcomed, accepted and loved, from the streets to the concert hall. Click here to find out more.

This commission was generously supported by the New South Wales Government through Create NSW, and was premiered in May 2022 at the Sydney Symphony's Regional Tour performances of Energy & Elation.

Here’s a video performance of Pride by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music' Brass Ensemble in a concert in Verbruggen Hall in October, 2023, conducted by Scott Kinmont.

Sound Makers

This was a fun project I worked on while I was at ABC Classic: a video-series produced by ABC Education to teach primary school kids how instruments make sound. I co-host with the brilliant Anna Foong across four fun-filled short episodes that are perfect for the primary classroom – check out the online digi-book here!

Podcasts about my music:

My music

This piece is about trees. Elements of treelike structure and growth inform the work in myriad ways. Its melodies, for example, twist and turn like branches and knotted tree roots, beginning as solos and then developing through the quintet into passages of flourishing polyphony. The large-scale structure of Arborescence is formed from two branching sections, separated by a central, musical ‘trunk’. The first of these sections depicts the underground, with melodies composed of mostly bass-register pitch language evoking subterranean root systems. The second part of the work is composed almost entirely in the treble register, and evokes the top part of a tree reaching towards the heavens, trembling and shaking with ecstatic bird-like song. In the final moments of the piece, those birds fly away, and the trilling, chirruping music dissipates, leaving only a few, high-pitched melodies to linger – like a few lone leaves trembling on the top-most twigs of a tree. This is a studio recording of my quintet, performed by Syzygy Ensemble on December 4 2015, at Iwaki Auditorium in Melbourne. Laila Engle – flutes (C flute, bass and piccolo) Robin Henry – clarinets (B flat and bass) Jenny Khafagi – violin Paul Zabrowarny – cello Leigh Harrold – piano Chris Lawson – engineer

Arborescence (2015)

Various aspects of this piece are 'treelike'. The melodies twist and turn like branches and knotted tree roots, beginning as solos and then developing through the quintet into passages of flourishing polyphony. The large-scale structure of is formed from two branching sections, separated by a central, musical ‘trunk’. The first of these sections depicts the underground, with melodies composed of mostly bass-register pitch language evoking subterranean root systems. The second part of the work is composed almost entirely in the treble register, and evokes the top part of a tree reaching towards the heavens, trembling and shaking with ecstatic bird-like song.

Performance by Syzygy Ensemble: Laila Engle (C and bass flutes, piccolo), Robin Henry (Bb and bass clarinets), Jenny Khafagi (violin), Paul Zabrowarny (cello) and Leigh Harrold (piano).

Studio Recording made at Iwaki Auditorium with engineer Chris Lawson.

Blackbird in the Garden (2016)

Video extracts from the season of 'Blackbird in the Garden'. In June 2016, I collaborated with flautist and friend Naomi Johnson to produce this whimsical concert piece, in partnership with Forest Collective. 

The concert brought together music and dance in a multidisciplinary performance based on my flute miniature series 'Following the Blackbird', which imagines a little girl wandering through an imaginary garden in pursuit of a blackbird. The piece requires the performer to walk and dance around the stage, and in this performance, we had the chance to work with the brilliant dancer, Elanor Webber. 

The Physiology of Taste (2014)

This piece for solo Bass Trombone takes its inspiration from Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin's treatise of the same name. This world premiere performance was given by Benjamin Anderson as part of a University of Melbourne Masters of Music recital at Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne.