Unfortunately it has been necessary to postpone this concert due to unforeseen circumstances. The new date for the premiere of The Laughing Moon at the Independent Theatre, North Sydney, is Sunday 17 February 2013.

On Sunday 25 November 2012 The New Sydney Wind Quintet will present the World Premiere performance of Ross Edwards’ The Laughing Moon – Five Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (2012)

• Date: Sunday, 25 November 2012, 3:00pm
• Venue: The Independent Theatre — 269 Miller St, North Sydney, NSW
• Tickets: $38/$34/$25 — Tickets can be purchased online or by phone on 1300 302 604

“When I was fortunate enough to receive a commission from Susan Gregory to compose a work for wind quintet, I decided that the repertoire for this combination could use some music that was ‘light but not trite’.  Accordingly, I aimed at being listener friendly while at the same time seeking to engage at a deeper level.

Naturally I took the opportunity to show off the brilliant virtuosity of The New Sydney Wind Quintet – based at the Sydney Conservatorium – for whom the work was composed. Some of the music draws on material from other works of mine and this has been substantially remodelled for its new context while retaining its original ethos.”

Ross Edwards.

The Sydney Premiere of Full Moon Dances, featuring Amy Dickson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, has been filmed and may be viewed any time for free on BigPond Video.

The entire concert, filmed Monday 8 October 2012 in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, is available for viewing, and features the following programme:

Verdi
The Force of Destiny: Overture
Edwards
Full Moon Dances – Saxophone Concerto
Ravel
Alborada del gracioso
La Valse
Bolero

Also included for viewing is an extended interview with Ross Edwards and Amy Dickson.

Click here to go to Sydney Symphony videos on BigPond Video

This week virtuoso saxophonist Amy Dickson will perform Ross Edwards’s new saxophone concerto ‘Full Moon Dances’ with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Amy Dickson has been taking this brand new concerto right around Australia in recent months, from Adelaide, to Perth, Tasmania, and now Sydney.

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya in a concert which also includes music by Verdi and Ravel – including his ever popular Bolero. Ross will be in attendance at these spectacular concerts.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Fri 5 Oct 8pm, Sat 6 Oct 8pm, Mon 8 Oct 7pm.

Further information about the concert and bookings is available from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra website, and the Sydney Opera House website.

Ross Edwards writes:

When I composed Dawn Mantras, I designed it to be pre-recorded in a studio and mimed for live television performance. I hadn’t intended to release the score, nor had I anticipated the world-wide interest in the music which followed the telecast. In response to an increasing demand that the work be made available for live concert performance, accompaniment to dance, school speech days, large-scale ceremonial events associated with visits by spiritual leaders such as the Pope and the Dalai Lama, I’ve devised a format which I hope will facilitate performance and expand the range of possibilities.

In the original recording, two shakuhachis  (Japanese bamboo flutes) were used to cover a range extending from G below middle C to C above the  treble stave.

Although the sound of the shakuhachi is desirable, either an alto flute or clarinet would be an acceptable alternative (transposed parts are provided),as would a recorder.

The saxophone part may be played by either an alto or tenor instrument, or by a clarinet or cor anglais. A transposed part for each is provided.

The didjeridu opens the work with several lusty kookaburra imitations (to greet the dawn) and then retreats into the background as an underlying drone, freely rhythmic and occasionally rising to prominence.

Choir chimes are a most acceptable alternative to the crotali, and if the tuned gongs are unobtainable they may be replaced by two suspended cymbals or two tam-tams, one medium and one large.

It will be necessary, of course, to equalize the winds in performance. The shakuhachi in particular will need boosting, especially if – as in the original performance – it is paired with a tenor saxophone.

The vocal soloist must be able to produce top C clearly and accurately and should be a girl or boy, or a young woman capable of producing a pure, unforced sound throughout the range. Where possible, the soloist should perform from a high position, e.g., an organ loft.

Attention to lighting is encouraged – a gentle, white light appropriate to the dawn in an otherwise darkened space.

Amy Dickson

One of my recent obsessions has been with the moon. I can’t explain why – at least, not in rational terms – but it’s reflected in the titles of works like Yanada (Moon Song), The Harp and the Moon for solo harp, and The Laughing Moon, for the New Sydney Wind Quintet (to be premiered in Sydney on 25 November).

On 7 June 2012, Amy Dickson and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra premiered Full Moon Dances, my new concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra. After three performances it was repeated in Perth, then Launceston and Hobart. On 5-8 October, Amy will give three performances of the work with the Sydney Symphony in the Sydney Opera House, and on 20 February 2013, she’ll play it with the Melbourne Symphony in the Myer Music Bowl. This work continues the ritual/theatrical trend that my music for the concert hall has taken over a period of almost thirty years. Its acceptance both in Australia and internationally has emboldened me to embrace it more and more enthusiastically.

It all began innocently enough in 1983 at a concert of my work in the Wollongong City Gallery. Three of the pieces on the program came from what was known in those days as my ‘sacred series’, so named because of the inward focus of the music. I described them as musical contemplation objects, and their sparse musical materials had been distilled from sounds of the natural world – hypnotic drones of cicadas and the intersecting shapes and patterns I discerned in the voices of crickets and frogs. In this concert, three of these so-called ‘sacred’ compositions – the piano solo Kumari, The Tower of Remoteness for clarinet and piano, and a work for ensemble – were presented as an unbroken 30-minute sequence.

Curious to see if this kind of music might induce at least part of the audience into a state of trance, I was also aware that it ran the risk of infuriating another, perhaps larger part. I suggested to Stuart Challender, who was conducting, that darkening the hall and performing under subdued lighting might create an atmosphere conducive to contemplation, but he dismissed the idea out of hand. Not unreasonably I suppose, as I’d sprung it on him just before the final rehearsal. Conductors continued to regard the prospect of lighting a concert work with suspicion until the premiere of Yarrageh – Nocturne for Solo Percussion and Orchestra in 1989, when soloist Ian Cleworth, conductor John Hopkins and the Sydney Symphony musicians and management took my suggestions seriously.

Since then I’ve never looked back: lighting instructions, basic at first, but increasingly elaborate, have appeared on the preliminary pages of many of my scores below the list of instruments, and as far as I know they’re regularly observed. There’s even a three-minute passage in my Third Symphony which is performed in almost total darkness.

The use of subdued lighting to create a contemplative atmosphere was explored further in The Heart of Night, a work for shakuhachi (a Japanese bamboo flute) and orchestra. My intention here was to explore the intuitive ‘night’ mode of consciousness in which linear clock time is suspended and the audience is invited to turn its attention inwards in present-centred contemplation. This is the kind of music universally associated with monasteries rather than Western concert halls, where narrative dramas are played out.

For the premiere of The Heart of Night in Hamer Hall, Melbourne, in 2005, the house lights were extinguished and the Melbourne Symphony performed from lighted music stands with a spotlight on conductor, Hiroyuki Iwaki. From this mysterious atmosphere, some minutes into the performance, the lighting faded up to reveal the soloist, Grand Master Riley Lee in his traditional ceremonial robes seated in the lotus position. Having done away with the conventional, applauded entry of the concerto soloist (very likely clad in penguin suit or gorgeous frock), I reached back to a much older ritual in which music had a specific purpose – in this case, as with the traditional honkyoku repertoire for the shakuhachi – to heal, by relaxing the body while the mind remained calmly alert. I’d also recalled the traditional and formerly indispensible association of other art forms with music, which was universally practiced until the Western concert hall became firmly established in the 18th century.

Lighting and ritual in the service of meditation was appropriate for Riley Lee. Diana Doherty, for whom I composed the oboe concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming in 2002, demanded something quite different. It makes sense, of course, for a composer and soloist to maintain an open line of communication. When I composed my violin concerto Maninyas (1981-88) for Dene Olding, I completed the score without consulting him. During rehearsal time he made some very useful suggestions along the lines of ‘how about a harmonic here?’ or, ‘let’s put this phrase up the octave’. He also sent me home after the first rehearsal to (hastily) extend the ‘Chorale’ movement, having perceived, quite correctly, that it was unbalanced. (Maninyas, although composed for the concert hall, has been choreographed many times and there are several ballets of that name). My collaboration with John Williams, for whom I composed my guitar concerto Arafura Dances in 1995, mainly consisted of his playing passages over the phone from London and demonstrating how a chord would sound better without the G#, etc. (He also tactfully suggested rewriting of a passage that sounded ‘a bit too flamenco’.)

I did some horrible things to David Thomas for whom I composed my Clarinet Concerto in 2007 – mainly in the form of very high passages which seemed almost impossible at first, but which he worked on until they didn’t screech anymore. David and I had a very productive collaboration by email, supplemented by the occasional meeting when I was in Melbourne. He meticulously navigated the birdsong-like tracery of many complex passages, and together we refined their notation. He had made it clear from the outset that he wanted none of my fancy theatrics and I respected this. But I did specify dimmed lighting for his second movement which is marked magico, and he responded by playing with veiled delicacy.

His first performances of the work with the Melbourne Symphony were superb, as is his recording for ABC Classics on a CD which includes both Bird Spirit Dreaming and The Heart of Night. And he immediately introduced the concerto to his student, Ashley William Smith, who has also given wonderful performances – as did Shefali Pryor of my oboe concerto in the wake of Diana’s premiere. I’m astonished how quickly brilliant students can inherit a new work from their teachers and make it their own.

Coming back to Diana Doherty and our collaboration with Bird Spirit Dreaming: I naturally wanted to make sure she was happy with her part as it evolved. Diana lives quite close to me in Sydney and occasionally we’d meet, but because of our busy schedules we found it easier to communicate via phone and fax. She told me she wanted this piece to be a real challenge – she’s the sort of person who responds amazingly well to challenges – and in stretching her to what I feared might be the limit I felt I needed reassurance, from time to time, that I hadn’t gone too far. I once faxed her a passage I actually thought was unplayable and within an hour she’d played it back perfectly over the phone. After that I felt free to compose anything I liked.

Diana is a very physical, theatrical performer – a vital, shining presence on stage who wades right into the music and just can’t seem to keep still. I couldn’t resist exploiting these qualities by adding a theatrical dimension, and with Diana’s enthusiastic participation we got together with my wife, Helen, and choreographer Paulina Quinteros, and in one of the most exhilarating creative exchanges I’ve experienced, turned the concert piece into a sort of ritual/mime with lighting, movement and dance. Diana’s quick, agile movements made me see her as a bird and her oboe as its beak – hence the subtitle Bird Spirit Dreaming – and together the four of us dreamed up a scenario to fit the image: a captive wild bird is led through various stages of socialisation, culminating in her falling in love and participating in a love duet with the object of her affection, represented by a cor anglais, and this liaison is consummated in an ecstatic celebratory dance.

The duet was composed especially for Diana to perform with her husband Alexandre Oguey, principal cor anglais in the Sydney Symphony. But since our conception hadn’t taken into account the longer life of the piece, Diana had a string of international ‘affairs’, some of them lesbian. Nor had we considered the possibility of the work, designed for a lithe female, being taken up one day by a lumbering male who (like me) couldn’t dance!

Fortunately, the first conductor, Lorin Maazel, got right into the spirit of things and we were able to implement our ideas with extraordinary success, first with the Sydney Symphony, then the New York Philharmonic (where Diana was billed as ‘the dancing oboist’), and with many other orchestras. It’s also been performed as a ‘straight’ concert piece – I know that a man played it that way some years ago in Cardiff – and I’m relieved and happy that this option has been taken up. Recently though, I’ve started to get enquiries about reviving and recreating the staged version.

Amy Dickson, the young Australian saxophonist now based in London, started writing to me after she won the Symphony Australia Young Performers’ Award in 2004. Amy is a performer in the Diana mould. Wonderfully musical, she has a flawless technique, a riveting stage presence and is game for anything. When we were getting serious about my writing her a concerto I asked her did she like to dance? Yes! Would she like to be a Moon Goddess? Oh yes!!! And I knew I was headed for another exhilarating roller-coaster ride. Last year she gave the world premiere of the soprano saxophone version of Bird Spirit Dreaming with the Canberra Symphony and with Diana’s encouragement. Her performance confirmed all my expectations of her.

Last November I completed the score of Full Moon Dances – a concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra. Amy and I had communicated by email most of the time I was composing, occasionally meeting when she happened to be in Sydney. I’d send her bits of the solo part as it evolved, and nothing seemed to faze her. Having mastered the solo part she turned her attention to the visual aspect of the performance. In Sydney she modelled a prototypal Moon Goddess costume for my wife Helen and me. From London we had an email describing a new white dress especially chosen for her by Armani, with colourful, reversible capes and hoods which were Helen’s brilliant and highly practical concept. Sydney milliner Suzy O’Rourke, an enthusiastic participant in the project, has designed capes and special headdresses. We also discussed the practicalities of lighting and movement with Simon Lord, the ASO’s Director of Artistic Planning. As it’s not possible to actually dance with so weighty an instrument as an alto sax, we’re settling for a more dignified presence, as befits a Goddess – actually a series of Goddess avatars: mysterious, demonic, serene and celebratory, each with music and costume and lighting variations to match.

Full Moon Dances, like most of my music, abounds in symbols relating to the environment and environmentalism: fragments of birdsong, plainsong, drones, allusions to various kinds of chant from around the world, including that of the Indigenous peoples of Australia; South East Asian scales and mediaeval European church modes – all in constant, kaleidoscopic interchange – as well as other material of personal significance which, over the years, have become embedded in my subconscious and which surface spontaneously (I always expect them to appear although I can never predict when). The universal Moon Goddess, as the source of plant life and protector of the environment, performs a series of ritual healing ceremonies. Serene and mysterious, she nonetheless has power to unleash ecstasy and terror beyond the bounds of reason.

The work unfolds in an unbroken sequence of five movements:

The score

1. Mantra with night birds and dark moon blossoms

An allusion to an ancient Vedic mantra grows into a chant-like melody which invokes the Goddess, whose appearance is accompanied by eerie night sounds symbolising the powerful psychic forces of the unconscious. The mantra persists in the background, eventually dissolving into moments of moon-drenched phantasmagoria.

2. First Ritual Dance

This cleansing ritual is driven by self-abandoning rhythms whose function is to purge negative thoughts and feelings. After a central climax, the dance abruptly returns to its source and resurges, gathering intensity.

3. Water-Moon

Guan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Compassion (who may be compared with the Christian Mary), is venerated in her various guises throughout South East Asia. She is often depicted as a beautiful, graceful woman in a white robe, sometimes with an aureole of moonlight. In a Tang dynasty poem by Po Chu-I she is symbolised by the moon’s reflection ‘floating in pure, clear water’. This dance pays homage to her.

4. Sanctus

The stage is transformed into a sacred space. Over an accompaniment of trance-like stillness scored for bell and muted strings, the Goddess sings serenely as she receives and transmits gentle moon radiance. This movement draws, as does its successor, on material from my Mass of the Dreaming (2009) and makes oblique reference to fragments of plainchant.

5. Second Ritual Dance

The finale joyously celebrates the earth with drone-based shapes and rhythms that recall Australian Aboriginal chant. The melody that bloomed from the mantra now returns accompanied by a blazing darbuka (a small North African hand drum), after which a reflective passage leads to a re-statement of the insistent, dance-like hymn to the earth.

Full Moon Dances was commissioned for Amy Dickson, the Sydney Symphony and the Australian symphony orchestras by Andrew and Renata Kaldor AO with the support of Symphony Services International. Once again I have Renata and Andrew to thank for their generous support over many years, and for their friendship and belief in my work. Amy’s costumes are by Armani and Suzy O’Rourke, drawing on concepts by Helen Edwards.

Amy Dickson with Ross Edwards

Afterword – Adelaide: a work diary

May. By now the performing material has been typeset and delivered: the full score, a set of parts and my piano reduction – superbly presented, as always, by Bernard Rofe.

26 May. As rehearsals for the premiere approach, my inevitable minor errors and miscalculations start to leap out at me as I check over the score. I’m busy making a list of corrections. Seduced by the beauty of their sound I’d perhaps rashly included 11 tuned Thai gongs, the deeper pitched of them very large, in the percussion line-up. These can be hard to come by and expensive to transport. I’d checked with principal percussionist Becky Lagos that the SSO had a set before other orchestras began to program the work. If they can’t get hold of a complete set it should be possible to play the part on a keyboard from sampled sound, so I’m keeping fairly calm at the moment.

5 – 9 June (Adelaide) Helen and I fly to Adelaide in time for the first rehearsal in the Grainger Studio. Amy is present. The conductor, Andrew Grams from Cleveland, USA, Helen and I had already met in Sydney and instantly liked. (We’d had coffee together in the Botanic Gardens and talked mainly about birds and animals – Full Moon Dances brims over with imagined birdsong, eerie, raucous, exultant – as well as a few tricky points in the score).

Throughout the rehearsals Andrew is confidently in control and has an easy rapport with the ASO musicians whose commitment to the work is evident. Simon Lord and Sophie Emery, the artistic management team, and everyone else concerned are always cheerfully helpful, although I know I’m being pretty high maintenance in my concern to get lighting cues and stage positions sorted. The Adelaide Town Hall stage is small compared to that of the Sydney Opera House, for which the work was conceived, but it has a glorious acoustic.

Amy, throughout, is calm and poised. I feel blessed – not all premieres take place in such a positive atmosphere! We are both very pleased that Peter Czornyj, the Sydney Symphony’s Director of Artistic Planning, has come to Adelaide for the premiere.

I find time to catch up with two old friends from my student days at the University of Adelaide. I have a lengthy, nostalgic chat on local radio with Grahame Dudley, composer, conductor and educator – we were both students of Peter Maxwell Davies, first in Adelaide and later in London – and next day Helen and I have lunch with Graham Williams, who gave up a promising career as a pianist soon after completing his postgraduate studies at the Paris Conservatoire with such luminaries as Loriod and Messiaen, to train as a teacher in the Tibetan and Burmese traditions of Buddhist meditation. He is now director of the Lifeflow Meditation Centre, which naturally places much emphasis on music. (Graham and I have collaborated on a set of ABC Classics CDs titled The Joy of Being, dedicated to healing through meditation and music and known affectionately as ‘Relax with Ross’). He shows Helen and me over Lifeflow’s magnificent new Adelaide premises.

I give several talks, including one to a seminar for young composers conducted by Jim Ledger. Helen and I manage to fit in a walk along the Torrens and a fleeting visit to the Art Gallery.

7 June. The premiere goes extremely well and has a wonderful reception. Simon Lord catches Amy and me for an ABC interview just as we come offstage. I think we were both feeling overwhelmed and I vaguely remember being quite inarticulate at first. Afterwards we attend a convivial sponsors’ dinner with mercifully short speeches and magnificent wines from the Clare Valley vineyard of Tim Adams, whom I’m placed next to. Comparing notes, we discover that each of us became aware of his vocation around the age of thirteen. This, of course, calls for another refilling of glasses. It was a memorable and enjoyable evening.

The following two performances get progressively even better and after the final one, and an overwhelming audience response, we come off stage feeling elated.

10 – 16 June. Helen and I return to a grey, rainy Sydney. Adelaide’s winter weather has been crisp but sunny. Amy goes to Perth, where Full Moon Dances will have more performances in the Perth Concert Hall with the WASO and a new conductor, Baldur Brönnimann, who will also conduct it in Launceston and Hobart. Phone calls from Amy assure me of Baldur’s excellence in rehearsal and a text message to Helen after the final performance announces that it has been a ‘huge, huge, huge success!’ She is full of praise for Baldur, the WASO, the lighting technicians, management and all concerned.

21 – 23 June. Similarly glowing feedback from Tasmania following performances with the TSO in Launceston and Hobart. I feel it’s now time for me to come back down to earth and give my full attention to the ballet score I’m commissioned to write for the Houston Ballet. I’ll also be revising some details of Full Moon Dances, in consultation with Amy, so that it’s ready for the Sydney Opera House performances with the SSO on 5, 6 & 8 October.

Ross Edwards.

The score of the Sonata is now available from The Australian Music Centre – Email: info@australianmusiccentre.com.au – Phone +61 2 9247 4677 – and the work has been recorded for future release by Tall Poppies Records.

Immediately after her concert performance Bernadette recorded the work for Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgn-of7cTxE

Ross Edwards with Bernadette Harvey

“Bernadette Harvey demonstrated once again that she is one of Australia’s most enterprising and resourceful pianists. Gifted with a rare physical control of the instrument and intellectual and interpretative qualities to match, she took the audience on a journey across rarely encountered musical territory. I particularly admired the skill Harvey essayed with Ross Edwards’ Piano Sonata (2011). Whether in the elated, joyful measures of the first movement, the gently lulling, melancholy moments of the slow movement or the intricate, idiosyncratic finale, Harvey sounded at her authoritative best.” (Neville Cohn, The West Australian).


Ross has written the following note:

My Piano Sonata has three movements. The first, which uses some of the devices of the classical sonata-allegro, opens with pounding earth rhythms punctuated by joyful outbursts that sound like birdsong. The jagged shapes and pulses of this material persist throughout much of the movement in various guises, sometimes directly re-stated, sometimes modified, transformed or merely hinted at. A delicately textured pentatonic episode provides a central moment of inward reflection, characteristic of my music, but in this case perhaps unconsciously influenced by the wind chimes in my neighbour’s garden.

As slow and sad as anything I’ve composed, the second movement – a simple three-part song form – flares briefly, and with a force that took me by surprise, into the Sancte Spiritus from my Dawn Mantras (which also marks the climax of my Third Symphony) before resuming its song of heartbreak. The last movement, I decided, needed to be cheerful. On a whim, I began by quoting one of my own children’s pieces, the last of the Five Little Piano Pieces, composed thirty five years earlier in 1976. Piano teachers, my wife among them, have long reprimanded me for making this piece too hard for little fingers and it seemed fitting that I should now further elevate it into the realm of virtuosity by increasing the tempo. Composed in the Indonesian pelog nem scale, its heterophonic interplay of voices suggests a toy gamelan playing with impossible velocity. Its child-like optimism shines through, however, and I tried to sustain this in later sections by preserving its spirit and momentum and echoing some of its rhythms. Following a wild introductory birdcall, textures recalling the playful Bach of the Two-Part Inventions are immediately established: Western polyphony here supplants South East Asian heterophony but a common musical purport creates a link between the cultures – or at least it does for me. The children’s music theme is reinforced by a fleeting but obvious Bach allusion.

One of Australia’s most celebrated composers, Ross Edwards is the Sydney Conservatorium’s International Marquee Composer for 2012. On Wednesday May 9 at 6pm, there will be a special retrospective concert of his work in Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium, Macquarie Street, Sydney. Music composed over a period of 32 years will be presented by some of Sydney’s leading performers and Ross will be onstage to introduce each work. This unique event, of both musical and historical significance, promises to be a highlight of the year’s musical activities at the Con.

Some of the works will be familiar, others less so. Ross’ new Piano Sonata, especially commissioned by the Con for this occasion, will be given its world premiere by Bernadette Harvey. Selections from his most recently completed composition, Five Senses, a song cycle to poems of Judith Wright, will be previewed by Jenny Duck-Chong, Bernadette Harvey and Claire Edwardes. Claire will also be performing some of Ross’ music for marimba, some of which was written especially for her.

Tickets: $20, Concession: $15, Friends of the Con: $15, Students: $10

Tickets may be purchased on the night, or booked in advance through the City Recital Hall website:
http://www.cityrecitalhall.com/events/id/1255/Special-Event-Ross-Edwards-101/

He’s happy to endorse two excellent new interpretations of his guitar solo Blackwattle Caprices by the German guitarist Stefan Barcsay and the American, Philip Hemmo.

And from The Australian Guitar Duo – Rupert Boyd and Jacob Cordover, scintillating performances of Djanaba and Emily’s Song, with more Australian music by Philip Houghton and Nigel Westlake.

Two works by Ross Edwards are finalists in the 2012 APRA | AMCOS Art Music Awards. The Art Music Awards are the only event that specifically acknowledges the achievements of Australia’s outstanding talent in the fields of contemporary art music, jazz and experimental music, with awards covering the best compositions, performances and achievements across 10 national categories.

Spirit Ground for violin and orchestra is a finalist for 2012 Work of the Year – Orchestral. The other finalists are Gardener of Time by Barry Conyngham, Missa Solis – Requiem for Eli by Nigel Westlake, and The Shining Island by Peter Sculthorpe. Spirit Ground was commissioned for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra by Geoff Stearn. The world premiere performance was conducted by Paul Daniel in the Perth Concert Hall on Friday 11 March 2011. Margaret Blades was the solo violinist.

Sacred Kingfisher Psalms is a finalist for 2012 Work of the Year – Vocal/Choral. The other finalists are Blackwood by Iain Grandage, Osanna Mass by Clare Maclean, and Pomegranate Friends by Gerardo Dirie. Sacred Kingfisher Psalms was co-commissioned by Ars Nova Copenhagen, the Edinburgh International Festival Society, The Song Company, and Father Arthur E. Bridge for Ars Musica Australis. The work was premiered by The Song Company, conducted by Roland Peelman, on 22 May 2010, at The Fitter’s Workshop, Canberra International Music Festival.

The winners of the 2012  APRA | AMCOS Art Music Awards will be presented at an awards ceremony, MCed by the Australian jazz trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist James Morrison, on Tuesday 3 April at the Playhouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House.