Composition Project

This is the fourteenth year that the West Australian Symphony Orchestra has run the Composition Project. For the last two years, due to COVID restrictions, the project was based on solo works for individual players. I am delighted that 2022 sees the return to the full size chamber orchestra.

The opportunity to write for an ensemble of WASO players is a much-needed platform for young and emerging composers who are in the later stages of their studies. It is an incredibly valuable lesson to hear music interpreted by real musicians, as opposed to playback from a computer. The skill and insight gained can only be obtained from an opportunity such as this.

Over the last two months the composers have written, tweaked and re-tweaked their works. The end result is a collection of four exceptionally well-crafted compositions.

For the composers it is in equal parts both daunting and exciting to have their creations brought to life by the WASO musicians. I know all the work late into the nights will be worth it!

So please enjoy tonight's performances, and join me in congratulating the cohort of Composition Project 2022.

James Ledger
Artistic Director, Composition Project

James Ledger
Artistic Director

James Ledger is a composer with a breadth of work spanning solo, chamber, electronic and orchestral music. He has held residencies with the West Australian, Adelaide and Christchurch (NZ) Symphony Orchestras, the Australian National Academy of Music and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. He has received commissions from Australia’s leading ensembles including the Melbourne, Sydney and Tasmanian symphony orchestras, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian String Quartet.

James has collaborated with songwriter Paul Kelly and released two ARIA award winning albums: Conversations with Ghosts (2013) and Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds (2019). He has won APRA Art Music Awards for three orchestral works: Viola Concerto (2019), Golden Years (2011) and Chronicles (2009).

He is Chair of Composition at the Conservatorium of Music at The University of Western Australia.

For more information please visit jamesledger.com

Moses Kington-Walberg
Composer

Moses is an emerging experimental composer currently completing his 4^th year of undergraduate studies in music at UWA. His compositions often seek to push the limits of colour through implementing indeterminacy, extended techniques, and non-traditional notation styles, resulting in soundworlds that are textually driven and dynamic. The unusual timbres he employs evoke an avant-garde atmosphere, often portraying images of the natural world through abstract and ethereal lenses.

In 2021 Moses won the Dorothy Ellen Ransom Prize for his electro-acoustic chamber piece “Luminescence”. He also received the WASO Composition Project Bendat Scholarship in 2021 for his solo double bass piece “The Piercing Gaze of a Submerged Creature”, written for WASO’s John Keene.

Moses is currently working on a composition with the UWA Symphony orchestra, collaborating with renowned WA artists and stage performers on a multidisciplinary stage production.

He directs Resonant Fields, an improvisation project connecting emerging artists with the WA experimental music scene.

Lydia Gardiner
Composer

Lydia Gardiner is a Perth-based composer with a Bachelor’s degree in music composition from The University of Western Australia. In 2019 she was recipient of the Ransom prize for composition at UWA, and participated in the 2020 and 2022 WASO Composition Projects.

Lydia has been commissioned by the West Australian Young Voices, UWA Con Cantorum, Giovanni Consort, St George’s Cathedral Consort, the Anglican Schools Commission, Perth Orchestra Project and Vanguard Consort.

Her work A New Ceremony of Carols was broadcasted nationally on ABC Classic in 2021, and in the same year Lydia was commissioned by Tura New Music to write for the Perth Festival, where her piece The Whale and I was performed by the St George’s Cathedral Consort and violinist Shaun Lee-Chen. Limelight wrote of this piece: “this remarkable work for choir and violin more than stood its ground against the major figures of the preceding works, an absolute credit to Gardiner.”

Oliver Broun
Composer

Oliver is currently in his final year studying composition at UWA. His work is primarily focused on harmony/pitch, and his main instrument is the keyboard synthesiser.

Oliver is a passionate participant in the Perth music community, involved with the local jazz and indie scenes as a bassist and keyboardist; playing in Ocean Cosmonaut, Baka Gaijin, and his brother Harry Broun’s band.

Oliver also builds and modifies electric guitars and basses, focusing on aesthetically original but functional designs as well as creative and unique electronic arrangements.

Victor Arul
Composer

Victor Arul is a composer who previously studied under A/Prof. Elliott Gyger at the University of Melbourne, and Dr. James Ledger at the University of Western Australia. Victor has collaborated with a variety of groups including the Australian Youth Orchestra, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, the Perth International Arts Festival, Piñata Percussion, the University of Western Australia’s wind and symphony orchestras, and the University of Melbourne’s Symphony Orchestra.

Victor has won numerous awards for his work and is a Schenberg fellow.

Victor's upcoming projects beyond the 2022 WASO Composition Project include pieces for the Sydney-based Halcyon, the USA-based line upon line percussion, the France-based collective lovemusic, and the German-based ensemble recherche.

Victor has been accepted to complete doctoral studies at Harvard University and will travel to Boston in late 2022 to receive supervision from Professor Chaya Czernowin and Professor Hans Tutschku in the field.