For a couple of years now, I’ve been reconnecting with musical traditions and practices from South America, integrating them in new creative projects. One of them was a performance commissioned by Tone List for their Audible Edge 2022 festival in Walyalup (Fremantle, Western Australia). Below is a conversation I had with Josten Myburgh last September,
In these uncertain times for music workers everywhere, I have been busy creating two pieces for protagonists of the new music scene here in Western Australia. Tura New Music have kindly commissioned me a video piece as part of their ‘No Borders‘ project. Also I’m very honoured that my friends of Decibel New Music have
Today I delivered the last of this year’s ‘Aesthetics and Compositional Practice’ classes that I teach at ECU. In the four years I’ve been teaching this, I’ve found a chance to share a lot of the knowledge and perspectives that I’ve brought with me to Australia. It also has given me a chance to update
Since its announcement yesterday, the news of the Australian government’s merging of the Department of Communications and the Arts into the newly created Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications have spread in no time, and gathered immediate outcry from a wide array of artists and cultural workers. The disappearance of the word Arts
One of the main challenges I’ve been facing as an artist lately is posed by my ineligibility to compete for funding, and other career opportunities, in equal conditions with other colleagues in my professional environment. This is a consequence of the complex migration status I’ve had for the past few years in the country I currently
Following on the Nono-themed posts, here is this beautiful text by Leni Alexander, which I’ve only recently come across. It was originally published in Spanish in the Revista Musical Chilena, in response to the news about Luigi Nono’s death in 1990. I’ve attempted this English translation with the sole aim to share it with others who
Almost a year has passed since this post, in which I translated (more as way of procrastination than for anything scholarly) a beautiful little text by Nono. There I pointed the lack of texts by him available in English, but the situation is about to change drastically with the upcoming publication, announced by UCP, of
A great discussion between fellow artists was recently brought to my attention, in which the question was raised of the relevance of what we do (post-avant-garde Western Art Music, or whatever you prefer to call it), in view of more pressing political issues in today’s societies. I am convinced that it is perhaps the most important
Plenty of commemorations are taking place this year, in remembrance of the many 1968 revolutionary movements from Paris to Prague to Mexico City. In the modest scale of our particular field, many pieces could be spotlighted from that tumultuous year. One that strikes me as particularly significant is Helmut Lachenmann’s temA. That was the first piece
What hope can I have for my own work as a composer, if the artistic voices that I look up to remain largely unknown around me? How could I establish a meaningful communication with performers, curators or audiences if we don’t share some important cultural references? How can I avoid creative asphyxiation if the artistic
