There’s a moment, just after the sun slips beneath the horizon, when everything seems suspended in ambiguity. Light softens, edges blur, and the familiar begins to dissolve.

For composer Miriama Young, this twilight hour is more than a daily transition – it’s a metaphor, a mystery, and, partly, the inspiration for a new chamber work, DuskLit, which will premiere in coming days in Omega Ensemble’s Distant World program – one that invites audiences into a soundscape that’s both intimate and cosmic, threatening and peaceful.

An Aotearoa/New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based composer known for fusing acoustic and electronic sound worlds, Young draws on a wide range of musical and natural inspirations. Her work often touches on ecology and place, listening deeply to what the world is saying as it turns.

Miriama Young

Miriama Young. Photo © Ishna Jacobs

DuskLit, written for clarinet, piano and string quartet and featuring field recordings, is emblematic of this approach. The work, she tells Limelight, has its roots in a callout on ABC Victoria’s rural network, which invited young people in climate-affected communities to contribute field recordings to a new work engaging with their environment and the places special to them.

“I’ve...