Collaborating Composers
Julian Day (b.1975) is a composer and sound artist based in Sydney. Described as “an epic and intimate formalist” he creates evocative works through simple yet often lateral means. His music inhabits a lush and frequently dark world of slowed down sounds, broken patterns and basic geometries, influenced by conceptual art, cracked media and pop culture. Recent works include Ascent for 100 flutes, Totem for skipping CDs and Ceremony for multiple spatialized synthesizers. Much of his work is site-specific and collaborative, taking place in spaces as varied as railway sheds, former meat markets and even New York’s Central Park lake. Day has worked with many leading musicians including Lisa Moore, Mark Stewart, TILT Brass, Mark Dancigers, David Longstreth, DuoSolo and The Song Company. His work has featured at the MATA festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, ISCM World New Music Days, Altes Finanzamt (Berlin), Het Nutshuis (The Hague) and Liquid Architecture. Day studied at the Queensland Conservatorium and Sydney College of the Arts, undertaking lessons and masterclasses with Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick and Gerard Brophy among others. He won the British Council’s Realize Your Dream and The Australian Voices Young Composer of the Year awards. Day directs the keyboard ensemble An Infinity Room (A.I.R) and co-directs Super Critical Mass, a large-scale project for massed identical instruments. He is also a writer and new music broadcaster, having presented programs on BBC Radio 3 and ABC Classic FM. www.julianday.com
Fiona Fraser (b.1960) initially trained as a social worker, beginning her first formal studies in omposition in 2005 at the Australian National University where she completed a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours and the University Medal in 2008.Her compositions include a chamber opera Capital which received a semi-staged production in 2009, as well as 4 orchestral works, choral works, songs, theatre work and numerous chamber and solo instrumental works. Fiona was awarded the ANU’s Harold Allen Memorial Prize for the leading composition student in 2006 and 2007 and in 2008 the Peter and Lena Karmel Anniversary Prize in Music awarded each year to the best graduating student in the School of Music. In November 2009 her choral work, I Cannot Dance, O Love, won the US-based Voices Found anthem competition. Fiona is currently engaged in Phd studies in composition at the Australian National University where she also teaches.
William Gardiner (b.1987) is an Australian composer currently studying at the Yale School of Music in the United States. William Gardiner previously attended the University of Sydney, where he received degrees in Arts and Law. Gardiner studied with several of the Australia’s leading composers, including Matthew Hindson, Paul Stanhope, Anne Boyd, Michael Smetanin and Damien Ricketson. William Gardiner is the product of a diverse musical pedigree. He was born to a pair of passionate early music enthusiasts, and spent his earliest years immersed in early music, most notably that of Bach, as performed by the likes of Ton Koopman, the Kuijken brothers and the Savall family. His teenage years were accompanied by the revelation of rock music, leading to Gardiner taking up the drum set and contributing to his strong rhythmic sense. During his later school years, an interest in composing was provoked by hearing the music of composers such as Astor Piazzolla, Latvian Pēteris Vasks, George Crumb and Alfred Schnittke. Upon finishing high school, William’s first compositional efforts, works written in imitation of Bach and Piazzolla, received perfect scores in the matriculation exams, resulting in performances at the Sydney Opera House. More recently, Gardiner has found inspiration in the inventiveness and beauty of music by Animal Collective, the emotive instrumental masterpieces of Canada’s Do Make Say Think, and the seething, virtuosic compositions of Italy’s Fausto Romitelli.
Kate Moore (b.1979) Sydney girl, born in Oxford, Dutch/ Australian family, now lives in The Hague. With a masters from the Koninklijk Conservatorium and an honours degree from ANU CSM Australia she makes music installations, theatre, concert works and everything in between. In 2011 Kate was selected as The Hague Toptalent by Stichting Venancio. In 2010 she received a DeKomeet Cultural prize for her work “Rain Project” and won the Carlsbad Festival Composer Award commissioning her to write “violins and skeletons” for the Calder Quartet. In 2008 she was the recipient of the Doris Burnett Ford scholarship. In 2003 she was a prize-winner at the Apeldoorn Young Composer Meeting and was in 2001 the winner of the Franco-Australian Composition Competition for her string quartet “Sketches of Stars”. For four years running 1999-2002 she received the Howard Allen Memorial Prize for composition and during her undergraduate studies was awarded an honours scholarship and University Medal. Moore has written for ensembles including the Amsterdam cello octet, Trio Scordatura, TwoSense, ASKO, The Bang On A Can All-Stars, The Song Company, Ensemble Klang and De Ereprijs Orkest. Her works have been performed in festivals including Klank en Kleur Festival (2011) The Sydney Film Festival (2011) Ecstatic Music festival NYC (2011) ISCM World Music Days (2010), Bang on a Can Marathon – World Financial Center (2010) MATA NYC (2009), ICWM Beijing (2008), MODART07 Sydney (2007) Bang on a Can Summer Festival (2007), International Gaudeamus Festival (2003/ 2011), Apeldoorn International Young Composer Meeting (2003).
Michael Sollis (b.1985) is a composer, researcher and artistic director based in Canberra. He is artistic director and composer of The Griffyn Ensemble, Canberra’s premier chamber ensemble with a reputation of innovative programming. He is also a published researcher within the interdisciplinary fields of anthropology-composition-linguistics. Michael studied under Jim Cotter and Larry Sitsky at the ANU School of Music, where he received the University Medal for music and anthropological research into sung tales in the Papua New Guinea highlands. Anthropological research has been formative in his own compositional language and have influenced much of his work. Michael has had works performed by ensembles all over Australia including The Australian String Quartet, The Griffyn Ensemble, Tucana Flute Quartet, dominantSEVEN, the Queensland Conservatorium Brass Band, Kuringai Philharmonic Orchestra, Canberra Mandolin Orchestra, and the performance of two musical theatre works. Michael has been Composer in Residence for The Australian Voices – one of Australia’s foremost choirs specialising in contemporary music; and Music For Everyone, winner of the 2009 National Music in Communities Award.
Michael currently teaches Composition at the ANU School of Music and is chair of the Australian Youth Music Council. He is ACT Manager for Musica Viva Australia, Australia’s largest presenter of chamber music.
