An exciting collaboration between flautist Lamorna Nightingale, vocalist Jane Sheldon and Australian composers Fiona Hill, Tristan Coelho and Cat Hope. ‘Other Voices’ is an intimate program of works for flute, voice and electronics exploring the ‘other’ in terms of instrumentation, collaboration, extra-musical content and the discovery of voice within a modern context. Featured in this concert is the Australian premiere of Luciano Berio’s work ‘Altra Voce’ for flute, voice and electronics, ‘Her Pockets Full of Inertia’ for flute and electronics by Cat Hope, ‘Daybreak’ by Tristan Coehlo and the premiere of ‘Taken’ by Fiona Hill.

This ‘Other Voices’ performance forms part of a larger project which aims to de-mystify new Australian electro-acoustic music. An education kit based around the new works is currently being developed which will provide an engaging and scaffolded learning structure to explore the electroacoustic genre through ‘creative play’. Workshops and professional development courses based on the kit will be designed to increase participation and engagement providing a valuable resource for teachers, composers and instrumentalists and bringing the freshest sounds in new Australian music to a broader audience. This aspect of the project is funded through NSW Department of Education and Training.

Flautist Lamorna Nightingale and Soprano Jane Sheldon share a common passion for working with living composers and being actively involved in the creation of new work in notated and improvised forms. They have worked together several times over the years most recently in a trio program with percussionist Bree van Reyk for the new BackStage Music Series in Sydney this year, and in the Sydney Chamber Opera’s productions of Biographica by Mary Finsterer (Sydney Festival 2017) and Rometelli’s ‘Index of Metals’ (2015). In 2009 they worked together on the The Origin Cycle, a song cycle for soprano and small ensemble of eight new Australian works setting fragments of Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ to music. This performance was winner in the “Best Performance” category at the 2011 ART Music Awards. In this program they join forces with Australian composers Fiona Hill, Tristan Coelho and Cat Hope to co-create new electroacoustic works for flute and voice which merge the boundaries between electronica and acoustica. They will also perform Altra Voce for Alto Flute, Mezzo Soprano and live electronics by one of the most significant composers of the 20th century - Luciano Berio. Composer and sound artist Fiona Hill creates works that occupy an experimental, freethinking yet universally beautiful place. A common theme in Hill’s electroacoustic work is the sourcing of sounds from nature and industrial environments and blending these in a musical space incorporating acoustic instruments, live performers and spatialised sonic environments. In this new work for flute, voice and electronics Fiona, Lamorna and Jane will collaborate for the first time exploring the history of forced adoption in a spatialised electroacoustic format. In 2015 Lamorna commissioned and worked closely with composer/flautist Cat Hope on her work for massed low flutes †̃Her Pockets Full of Inertia’ which was premiered at the Australian Flute Festival. For this program the piece will be reworked to be performed by solo flute with a pre-recorded track. Cat Hope’s music is conceptually driven, using mostly graphic scores, acoustic /electronic combinations and new score reading technologies. It often features aleatoric elements, drone, noise, glissandi and an ongoing fascination with low frequency sound. Sydney composer Tristan Coelho and Lamorna have also worked closely on the creation of several new works including his sextet read/write error which was premiered by Ensemble Offspring in their 20th birthday celebration ‘Future Retro’ and a reworking for bass flute and vibraphone of As the Dust Settles originally for bass recorder. His music draws inspiration largely from either nature, especially the idea of amplifying otherwise soft and delicate sounds, or conversely our digital, data- driven world. Tristan’s new piece for flute and electronics will explore the calls of endangered bird species and will be premiered in the Ensemble Offspring 2018 concert series.