Composition Project

This is the fifteenth year that the West Australian Symphony Orchestra has run Composition Project.

The opportunity to write for an ensemble of professional players is a much-needed platform for young and emerging composers. It is incredibly valuable to hear music performed and gain insight from the musicians performing these new works. The WASO musicians are able to help provide skills that emerging composers need at this juncture in their careers.

Over the last two months the composers have written, re-written, tweaked and re-tweaked their works. The end result is a collection of five exceptionally well-crafted and incredibly varied new pieces.

For the composers it is both daunting and thrilling to have their creations brought to life. However, I know that all the work into the “wee small hours” will be worth it!

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

Charles Barblett
Composer

Charles Barblett is a Perth-based composer and performer who graduated from the UWA Conservatorium of Music in 2021 with first class Honours in Music Composition. He studied under Dr James Ledger with a focus on brass and orchestral settings. His music seeks to find unity in chaos, striving to locate and live in the intersections between phenomenology, presentism and mindfulness.

Charles has participated in numerous development programs including programs run by WASO and Perth Festival. He has written for the UWA Symphony Orchestra, Perth Orchestra Project, was a finalist in the 2020 UWA Dorothy Ellen Ransom Prize, and was awarded runner-up in the 2022 Willoughby Symphony Orchestra Young Composer Award.

Alongside composition, Charles has claimed multiple state solo bagpipe championship titles, and until recently was an employed performing member of the Grade 1 Western Australia Police Pipe Band. He is actively engaged in the arts management space, being an alumnus of the 2023 Australian Youth Orchestra Orchestral Management program and having also been awarded a fellowship in arts administration with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the same year.

Raphael Luxton
Composer

Raphael Frey Luxton is a composition student currently completing his Bachelor of Music (Honours) at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). He has been inspired by music from an early age, learning the piano so he could busk alongside his older brother every Christmas holiday in the city. Raphael continued piano and music lessons throughout his education. In 2019 he graduated from John Curtin College of the Arts, where he majored in Media Production and Analysis.

His passion for composing stemmed from his appreciation of music in film, leading him to WAAPA where he collaborates regularly with the WA Screen Academy. In addition to film music, Raphael specialises in writing orchestral, chamber and solo works, collaborating with various national ensembles including the Australian Youth Orchestra, Adelaide Youth Orchestra, WAAPA Symphony Orchestra, and now the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

As a pianist, he has also received acclaim for his piano compositions. From Raphael’s third-year composition recital, his piece Mosaic for solo piano achieved first prize in the international young artist category for the Golden Key Composition Competition. In August he will embark on an exciting trip to Vienna to perform the work and accept the prize.

Alief Scott
Composer

Alief was born in Gold Coast, Queensland where he lived until moving to Perth in 2005. Alief’s musical education started in primary school, where he learnt the basics of music while being exposed to a wide variety of musical styles ranging from classical to contemporary. Alief picked up classical guitar at the age of 11, which he continued learning throughout high school.

Alief’s first taste of composition came with the composition assignments he received in music class in high school, and he soon began experimenting with the notation software outside of these assignments and wrote and arranged many small, and mostly unfinished, pieces. In 2018 Alief started learning piano and has since completed an AMEB Certificate of Performance. Alief’s ATAR Music journey began in 2019, where he became more focused on studying music and practising for performance exams, whilst still composing in his free time.

Upon the completion of ATAR, Alief decided to audition for a place in the composition program at the UWA Conservatorium of Music, where he is currently in his third year under the tutelage of Dr James Ledger.

Nicholas Kyriakacis
Composer

Nicholas Kyriakacis is an emerging composer and improviser based in Perth. Beginning as a traditional Greek Bouzouki player, Nicholas changed direction late in high school to pursue his passion for composition. While pursuing composition, Nicholas joined the St. Romanos Liturgical English Choir which sparked his appreciation of sacred music. In 2022, Nicholas completed his Bachelor of Music, specialising in composition, at The University of Western Australia under the tutelage of James Ledger.

He is fortunate to have had many opportunities as an emerging composer, including having his orchestral work The Ladder performed on the 2023 Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp as part of the Young Composer Program. Equally he was overjoyed to have won the Dorothy Ellen Ransom Prize in 2022 for his work Anayenisis which was performed by the UWA Symphony Orchestra.

Recently, Nicholas made his debut local experimental improvisation performing as part of the Resonant Fields Ensemble and at Tone List events in venues such a Perth State Library and Fremantle Old Customs House. Currently, Nicholas is preparing to perform as part of the Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music and collaborating with the A2 Orchestra.

Rose Russell
Composer

Rose Russell (they/she) is a 19-year-old composition student, currently in her third year of study at UWA under the tutelage of James Ledger. Previously to her study at UWA, she was a junior scholar at St John’s Anglican Church in Fremantle, studying piano, organ and composition under Dr Daniel Masmanian.

Rose has been involved in various UWA and non-UWA events, including the UWA Pride Concert in both 2021 and 2022, two concerts with the Tenth Muse Initiative, the Studio 2022 program where her work Agnus Dei was performed by the Vanguard Consort, and the Dorothy Ellen Ransom Prize for Composition 2022 where her orchestral work Images of a Forgotten Seafarer was performed by the UWA Symphony Orchestra.

In her compositions, Rose aims to be innovative with her use of melodic fragments, manipulation of structure and shifting harmonic language. Her love of late-Romantic and 20^th century Soviet sound-worlds shines through in her work, with her greatest inspiration coming from the works of Brahms, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Rose’s personal favourite description of her work is her teacher’s likening of it to “hungover Brahms”.