Composition Project
COMMUNITY EVENT
Tuesday 24 June, 6pm
Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA
West Australian Symphony Orchestra respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and Elders of Country throughout Western Australia, and the Whadjuk Noongar people on whose lands we work and share music.
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Welcome
Composition Project
Darcy LEWIS Aluminated Grey
Lucas TOMKINS Infinities
Somayeh HEIDARVAND Resonances from Matilda Bay
Domenic LAMATTINA I Jest, You Jest
James Ledger artistic director/conductor
This concert does not contain an interval.
About Composition Project
WASO’s Composition Project offers young and emerging Western Australian composers the opportunity to develop their skills in a professional environment. Through a series of individual lessons, workshops and rehearsals, participants compose a new work for a 14-piece chamber ensemble, performed by WASO musicians in front of a live audience. Participants are mentored both by James Ledger (Artistic Director), Olivia Davies (WASO Composer-in-Residence) and WASO musicians.
The winner will have the opportunity to compose a new 3-minute piece of music for WASO’s mainstage education concert in 2026.
Composition Project is supported by the Bendat Family Foundation.
WASO On Stage
About the Artists
James Ledger
Artistic Director/Conductor
James Ledger is a composer whose music has been performed internationally. His first orchestral work Indian Pacific (1996) is still regularly performed around Australia. He has held residencies with the Adelaide, Christchurch (NZ) and West Australian 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 the Australian String Quartet.
Ledger has collaborated with singer-songwriter Paul Kelly on two song-cycles: Conversations with Ghosts (2012) and Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds (2019). Both of these albums won ARIA awards. He has won APRA Art Music Awards for his orchestral works Viola Concerto (2019), Golden Years (2011), and Chronicles (2009).
His most recent orchestral work, The Light Fantastic, was commissioned by WASO to commemorate the start of the Orchestra’s residency at Winthrop Hall in 2025.
As artistic director of the WASO Composition Project, Ledger has conducted the premieres of over 50 works from emerging composers since 2009.
He is Chair of Composition at the Conservatorium of Music at The University of Western Australia.
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About the Artists
Darcy Lewis
Darcy Lewis is a composer of new music, incorporating elements of Western Art Music, improvisation, and extra-musical creative processes. An honours student in Composition and Sonic Arts at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Darcy’s curiosity has also led him to broader study in Tokyo, Japan and Gothenburg, Sweden, where he collaborated with the international ensemble Curious Chamber Players on his work Let Movement (2024), and Språng Kultur on the multidisciplinary dance project, Ark.
Darcy’s music focuses on exploring new mediums and techniques, providing audiences with diverse points of access to his work. He ahas a passion for bringing historical methods and instruments into the 21st century composition toolbox as seen in Let Movement, Movement I. (for traverso), a dancer sliced in twain, and his recent junior recital It Had Only Just Begun. These works explore the unique connection between movement and music using the elaborate ornamentation of baroque dance notation, combined with the rigid and specific structures of traditional notation practices.
Darcy has written music for film and theatre, maintains a performance practice centred around improvisation and the use of instruments as an extension of the performer, and is a member of WAAPA’s HearNow Art Orchestra.
About the Music
Darcy LEWIS Aluminated Grey
A dark but energetic and evolving landscape, Aluminated Grey situates the audience in a vast grey expanse. From this expanse emerges flashes of light which grow and move between the voices of the orchestra. These flashes will grow in intensity as the piece develops, with some fading into the darkness and others exploding in an intense flash until, finally, the speckled grey is replaced by a bright wash of light at the piece’s conclusion.
The word ‘Aluminated’ refers to the subtle influence of the aluminium foil affixed to the bell of the bass clarinet. The audience will observe that some frequencies produced by the instrument will resonate the foil and gently ‘Aluminate’ the swirling sound around it. The piece utilises several other non-standard techniques for the ensemble and plays with different methods of graphic notation to place the musicians, and the sound they produce, into the darkness they are imitating.
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About the Artists
Lucas Tomkins
Lucas Tomkins is a Perth composer in his second year at The University of Western Australia (UWA). His interest in composition started at a young age, improvising on the piano and enthusiastically watching West Australian Symphony Orchestra performances from the upper gallery.
He had his first composition lessons at the age of 11, notating some orchestral compositions inspired by his piano improvisations. When he was 13, his work Under the Wide Sky was performed as part of the inaugural WAYAChamp Compose program. He continued to compose throughout high school at Shenton College and created a portfolio of works inspired by his experience of the Australian landscape.
Eager for any excuse to leave the city, Lucas finds the Australian landscape a place of quiet, reflective stillness and a source of musical inspiration. One of these pieces, Nightfall for soprano and string orchestra, was performed at the 2024 Performing Arts Perspectives. More recently, his piece The Dark and I was performed at the UWA Conservatorium as part of the Dorothy Ellen Ransom Prize.
As well as music, Lucas is interested in physics, engineering, and the environment; he is doing a double major in Music and Frontier Physics through the Bachelor of Philosophy.
About the Music
Lucas TOMKINS Infinities
Infinities is named for a feeling of expansiveness, or beauty, or solitude, that I feel in vast, rugged, wild natural landscapes. For me there is a stillness, power and an awe in such places that I try to keep within me through music.
My musical ideas, and the way they are shaped and organised, are inextricably related to these landscape influences, though I haven’t crafted this piece around a specific idea, musical or otherwise. I think of it instead as something of a collage of musically related phrases, motifs, and harmonic or textural gestures, some of which have been in
my mind for some time, that make up a bigger picture of musical colour.
Some of these themes are circumstantially related to natural ‘infinities’; the opening melodic gesture occurred to me at the Fitzgerald River National Park, a vast wildness which is both grand and intricate, powerful and quiet; there is also an idea or two taken from a nature poem I set last year. The textures and gestures were influenced by Mahler, Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, while Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven and others were in the background as usual.
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About the Artists
Somayeh Heidarvand
Somayeh’s musical journey started when she, as a teenager, commenced her studies in Persian classical music in her homeland by playing both violin and Persian setar. It was only after she immigrated to Spain that she was introduced to Spanish and Western art music. Years of studies both in theory, vocal, and instrumental music led her to academic studies in composition, which brought her to Australia in 2024, Here she completed a Master’s degree in music composition and premiered two of her early orchestral works with South Side Symphony Orchestra and Allegri Chamber Orchestra in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Her multicultural background broadened her musical perspective to embrace many contrasting approaches and styles of composition. Her interest in nature as the primary source of human auditory perception has enormously influenced the ongoing building of her personal compositional style. Although, in the past, she had the opportunity to write classical music for ensembles and orchestras, her recent works have redefined and reshaped her compositional approach by employing timbre as an essential element in her compositions. For her, music must be used as an interdisciplinary art to positively impact human behaviour and mindset by addressing social and environmental concerns.
About the Music
Somayeh HEIDARVAND Resonances from Matilda Bay
Resonances from Matilda Bay, as the title suggests, was inspired by the sounds and noises I often hear at Matilda Bay while walking along the river on the campus of The University of Western Australia. The sounds of the river, wind, insects, and swans are present throughout this piece and constitute the structure of the whole work.
Instead of transcribing the environment directly from nature to musical notation, I chose to use these sounds to construct a series of short episodes organized in a musical context. The first episode introduces a calm environment where wind and the river are the principal elements. The second and third episodes incorporate the insects and the pigeons to create an agitated sonic environment that contrasts with the first episode. The emergence of a flock of flying swans gradually builds the climax at the end of the work before they disappear and give way to the relaxing sound of water that takes the discourse to a closure.
This work aims to awaken and activate the listener’s imagination to portray those scenes in mind by submerging them in a world of sonic effects and colourful timbres that evolve and transform constantly.
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About the Artists
Domenic Lamattina
Domenic Lamattina is an aspiring composer, percussionist and conductor from Perth, Western Australia. Attracted to all things musical from a very early age, Domenic developed a keen sense of musicianship in high school, studying percussion and composition at Trinity College, East Perth, where his first works for percussion and concert band were premiered.
Domenic took his passion for music to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), where he won the prestigious Royal Over-Seas League Orchestral Composition Prize in his first year of study with his orchestral work Fantasy Overture, and later had his pieces Heroine’s Journey for concert band and Oscillations for percussion ensemble premiered by WAAPA’s acclaimed ensemble groups.
Domenic continues to gain real-world performance experience playing percussion in ensembles outside WAAPA, such as the WA Youth Orchestra and the WA Wind Symphony, touring with the latter to Melbourne in March 2025 for the Australian National Band Championships. He frequently performs with the WA Symphonic Wind Ensemble, premiering new works of his and conducting the group on occasion.
Striving to make a name for himself in Perth’s music scene, Domenic hopes to pursue a career in composition for concert, film and video games.
About the Music
Domenic LAMATTINA I Jest, You Jest
Perhaps my wackiest work to date, I Jest, You Jest depicts a court jester who discovers he has magical powers and decides to use them to wreak havoc.
A recognisable motif, first heard in the French horn, forms the basis of the whole work. The piece begins bombastically, briefly transitioning to a dark, ominous sound world before the piece begins in earnest. The opening motif is expanded into a full theme, supported by goofy, chromatic harmonies and accompaniment. A dreamier, more magical section follows, featuring augmented chords and slow-moving textures, before a development section begins.
This first half is fairly traditional in structure, with an introduction, theme and development. But, what happens when the jester breaks the fourth wall and starts using his powers to toy with the music itself? You might start to hear themes and melodies that don’t belong; the musicians might seem to fall in and out of sync with one another, playing at the wrong time or in the wrong key; the rhythmic meter might change suddenly and unpredictably… and what will happen when the jester goes mad with power and tires himself out?
One thing is for sure — this piece is a wild ride.
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About WASO
Engage | Excite | Experience | Educate
From the centre of Perth to the furthest corners of the state, we have provided the soundtrack to life in WA since 1928.
As the State Orchestra, Perth’s first and finest, WASO is the largest employer of performing artists in Western Australia and reaches two million people with musical experiences each year on stage, in our community, and online.
From concert stages to classrooms, hospitals to aged care, we bring joy, inspire learning, and nurture participation in our community, because everybody deserves the opportunity to experience live music. Every year, through community and leading industry partnerships, we engage a new generation of young and emerging artists to help secure a bright future for music in Australia.
We celebrate our rich classical music heritage with great artists from all over the world and commission and perform new repertoire to renew and expand it. The Orchestra collaborates widely with major arts companies and independent artists, performing opera to ballet, movies to musicals, jazz to rock.
Asher Fisch is Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of our Orchestra. We champion the diversity of music in all its forms, with a team of talented and passionate people who create unforgettable experiences for all West Australians to enjoy.
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Your Concert Experience
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- Clap with enthusiasm
Whether you are welcoming your favourite artist to the stage, or showing appreciation at the end of a piece, we love thunderous applause. Not sure when to clap? Here’s a tip; if the conductor’s arm is raised, hold it. If it’s relaxed, go for it!
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Pictured: Samantha Wickramasinghe (far left) and Allan Meyer (far right) - Annual Giving Ambassadors with Janet Holmes à Court AC.
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