SHIFT PROGRAM NOTES

Kristin Rule - Shine for video, viola and live electronics 10 mins

As a documentary film composer, I am intrinsically drawn to the powerful combination of words, moving images and music to convey that which lies beyond. In Shine, for the first time I bring forth my words, my images and my music into a single expression of the healing journey sparked by a traumatic left hand injury in 2018. Shine forms part of a larger body of work I’m currently developing entitled “In Beauty, I walk”, a collections of dreams and experiences shared through words, images and music on the inherent wisdom that emerges in all of us through challenge and loss. Still healing, this performance offers me an important stepping stone back into the world of live performance, and for that I am truly grateful to Backstage Music for all that they are doing to improve accessibility and offer artists like me a chance to share our voices. Kristin Rule

Rebecca Bracewell - Spirals for hearing aids and live electronics 10 mins

Spirals is an electroacoustic work that explores hearing aid feedback. Hearing aids have a microphone, amplifier, and speaker, and feedback happens when the amplified sounds are picked up through the speaker, fed back through the microphones, and so on in a loop. As a hearing aid wearer herself, feedback is a regular part of Rebecca’s sonic life. She is interested in exploring the little ways that her listening devices malfunction, amplifying those sounds through resonating glass jars, and building a texture through live looping. In exploring each hearing aid’s unique timbre and frequency, she attempts to build a miniature living ecosystem out of these devices that are so often seen in a purely medical and mechanical way.

Georgia Scott - My3LiNAti0nS for solo flute 5 mins

My3LiNAti0nS, pronounced Myelinations, is a piece for solo flute which is amplified with a small microphone. In this concert, it will be played by Flautist Lamorna Nightingale. It is inspired by a quote from music theorist Laurie Stras who states “The disrupted voice conveys meaning even before it conveys language”. The piece was devised by slowing down moments of disrupted voice and exploring the beauty and patterns present within these moments.

Molly Joyce - Form (conform and reform) for voice, clarinet, percussion and flute 11 mins

Form is a song cycle centering on physical conformation, deformation, reformation, and transformation themes. Much of my artistic work focuses on creating an aesthetic grounded in physical impairment, and I thus believe that these themes are central to the social construction of disability and its surrounding parameters.

Therefore with the songs, I hope to not only counter previously-constructed views and notions regarding disability but also bring into question why and how these impressions are established. As I have a physically-impaired left hand due to a previous car accident, it has become incredibly important to me to engage with the social construction of disability and call into question whether or not this construction can be challenged, if not even transformed, to suggest a physicality beyond ability and beyond comparison.

Form was written in 2017-18 throughout the US and Europe, and was commissioned by the VONK Ensemble with support from the Fonds Podiumkunsten. The cycle is also dedicated to the VONK Ensemble, to whom I am immensely grateful for their dedication and efforts throughout the creative process.

Nat Bartsch - Hope solo piano set with ambient sounds and video projections 10-15 mins

The End of the Decade (from Hope)
Big World (Sydney premiere - new lullaby)
Forever, and No Time At All (from album of the same name)

I’ve long found inspiration and solace in writing meditative, lyrical piano pieces that seek to capture our universal experiences. This can be seen most evidently in my lullabies, first heard on the album Forever, and No Time At All, and my 2021 album Hope that responds to climate change and the pandemic. In this performance, I will play pieces from both of these albums - but for the first time, matched with a sensory video by Mark Wells.

This marks the beginning of a new phase of my lullaby project - creating an autistic-led, immersive Relaxed performance, for neurodivergent people of all ages to enjoy and (hopefully) find self-regulation.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Morwenna Collett - Curator, Panel Facilitator and Access Consultant
An accomplished Australian leader with 15 years’ experience in the arts, not-for-profit, government and university sectors, Morwenna has worn the hats of CEO, Board Director, project manager, lecturer, researcher, trainer and advisor. She is a musician and identifies as disabled. As a senior arts consultant specialising in diversity, access and inclusion, Morwenna is working towards a future where everyone has equal access to participate in the arts. She is sought after nationally and internationally for her expertise and works with arts, cultural and screen organisations to help them make positive changes to support the inclusion of people from diverse backgrounds. She makes an impact by producing diversity-related strategies and programming, Disability Action Plans, evaluation & research projects and delivering Disability Inclusion Training. Morwenna is a member of advisory committees with the City of Sydney, Sydney Festival, Perth Festival and Sydney Fringe Festival and is a Board Director of Arts Capital. She was previously the CEO of Accessible Arts and a senior leadership team member of the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2020, she completed a Churchill Fellowship, exploring inclusive music programs, venues and festivals which actively engage disabled people across the USA, UK and Ireland.

Lamorna Nightingale - Curator, Flautist

Lamorna is a freelance flautist, concert presenter, educator and publisher who is passionate about the future of art music in Australia. She has many years experience working in the orchestral sector and is a core member of the new music group, Ensemble Offspring. Lamorna is the Artistic Director of ‘BackStage Music’, a concert series in Sydney which fosters a culture for living music. She has recently created a new album of Australian music for flute and electronics with an associated education kit designed to introduce school students to electroacoustic music and contemporary Australian classical composition. Lamorna has also created several pedagogical volumes of repertoire for young flute players through her publishing company ‘Fluteworthy’.

Rebecca Bracewell - Composer and Performer
Rebecca Bracewell is a composer and sound artist living in Naarm/Melbourne. Originally trained as a classical accordionist, she began a degree in composition at Monash University in 2018. In 2021, she completed her fourth year Honours, writing a thesis about the creative implications of listening with hearing loss. Like her thesis, her recent work has been about finding ways to use her hearing aids as creative devices. Her debut EP, Raveling Wails, was created using samples of her hearing aid feedback. In 2021, she was selected as one of three fellows to participate in the Bouman Fellowship, resulting in a piece that premiered in the U.S in May. More recently, she was commissioned to develop a piece for the Inventi Ensemble, which premiered in June at the Hawthorn Arts Centre. She is currently developing new work as a resident in Chamber Made’s Little Operations program.

Ria Andriani - Voice
Ria Andriani is a Braille specialist by day, a musician and writer by night and on weekends. She graduated with Bachelor of Music/ Bachelor of Arts from UNSW in 2015. She now sings as a soprano with various choirs and ensembles in Sydney; she also writes on issues of Accessibility in the Arts, choral music and is a reviewer for fine music websites in Sydney.

Kristin Rule - Composer and Viola
Kristin Rule is a bicycle-riding, nature-loving, cellist, composer & technologist based in the remote Victorian town of Mallacoota. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts majoring in Music Composition in the year 2000 and has since forged a unique pathway in the music industry via her passion for cello, live looping and moving images. Kristin has worked as a film composer on a number of Australian feature-length documentaries and TV series including Araatika - Rise Up (dir Larissa Behrendt), We Don't Need a Map (dir Warwick Thornton), The Scribe (dir Ruth Cullen), Backtrack Boys (dir Cathy Scott), The Beach (dir Warwick Thornton) and The Leadership (dir Ili Baré). She was co-nominated alongside fellow composer Megan Washington for the AACTA Awards Best Original Score in a Documentary for 'The Beach' (dir Warwick Thornton) in 2022. In early 2018, Kristin sustained a serious left-hand trauma. Over a three-year duration, she had five reconstructive surgeries including bone and multiple tendon grafts. No longer able to play cello she is currently retraining as a violist, her viola affectionately referred to as her HTC (Hand Therapy Cello).

Molly Joyce - Composer
Composer and performer Molly Joyce was recently deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her music has additionally been described as “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “unwavering” and “enveloping” (Vulture). Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. Her debut full-length album, Breaking and Entering, featuring toy organ, voice, and electronic sampling of both sources was released in June 2020 on New Amsterdam Records, and has been praised by New Sounds as “a powerful response to something (namely, physical disability of any kind) that is still too often stigmatized, but that Joyce has used as a creative prompt.” Molly’s creative projects have been presented and commissioned by Carnegie Hall, TEDxMidAtlantic, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical:NEXT, and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, WNYC’s New Sounds, and I Care If You Listen. Her compositional works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Vermont, New World, New York Youth, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, as well as the New Juilliard, Decoda, Contemporaneous ensembles, and Harvard Glee Club. Additionally, she has written for publications 21CM, Disability Arts Online, Women in Foreign Policy, and is a member of Americans for the Arts’ Artists Committee.

Nat Bartsch - Composer and Piano
Nat Bartsch is a twice-ARIA-nominated Australian pianist and composer who creates lyrical, ethereal work that explores the space between neoclassical, chamber music and jazz genres. Her sound is influenced by Melbourne piano luminaries Luke Howard and Andrea Keller, studies with ECM pianists Tord Gustavsen and Nik Bärtsch, and the indie heroes of her upbringing: Sufjan Stevens, Elbow and Radiohead. She has released seven recordings of original music, toured domestically and internationally, and collaborated with some of Melbourne’s finest artists. Nat has become most well known for her lullabies, which, during early motherhood, saw her translate her gentle aesthetic into music with purpose. Nat created a suite of pieces designed to soothe babies to sleep, but also be meaningfully enjoyable for adults. After interviewing music therapists, she composed a series of pieces incorporating as many of their recommended parameters as possible (tempos similar to a mother’s heartbeat, gentle sounds, simple melodies and harmonies, ostinatos and repetition). Each piece is named after her newborn son’s stage of development at the time. The resulting album, Forever, and No Time At All was released in 2018 on ABC Classic. It is played regularly by many families, but also by people from all walks of life, supporting women in labour, people with mental illness, autism and grief. This album, as well as her 2017 solo debut solo Hometime, were produced by friend and pianist Luke Howard. In 2020, Nat released Forever More, a jazz sextet re-interpretation of her lullabies, which was nominated for an ARIA for Best Jazz Album. In May 2021 she released her critically acclaimed album Hope, for piano, string quartet and electronics, co-produced again by Howard. Nat received an ARIA nomination again for this release- Best Classical Album.

Ensemble Offspring (Claire Edwardes - percussion, Lamorna Nightingale - flute and Jason Noble - clarinet) are Sydney’s musical mavericks, uniting the most innovative instrumentalists in Australia with a broad collective of collaborators to explore new ideas through living new music. Led by acclaimed percussionist Claire Edwardes OAM, the ensemble comprises a core line-up of some of Australia’s most esteemed and experienced chamber musicians, championing living composers and creating musical experiences that stimulate the senses and pique curiosity. Ensemble Offspring supports emerging and as-yet-unheard composers, in particular Australian female-identifying and First Nations artists. Ensemble Offspring were awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award and the State Luminary Award in the 2021 Art Music Awards for consistently high-quality performances, breadth of repertoire, and commitment to collaboration for 25 years. Committed to subverting the classical music tradition with experiential concerts of living new music across genre, place and art form, Ensemble Offspring are navigating the future with open mindedness, flexibility and joy! https://ensembleoffspring.com/