For Fiona Hill, music is an act of connection, a vehicle for forming a deeper understanding of ourselves, each other, and our inescapable entwinement with mother earth. 

That conviction sits at the heart of everything she writes, and it is why, at the 2026 Canberra International Music Festival – where she takes up the role of Composer in Residence – collaboration is not a technique she reaches for but the very ground her work stands on.

Fiona Hill. Portrait supplied

Across three concerts, audiences will encounter a body of work that sculpts and layers sound across film, dance, improvisation, voice and the symphonic stage. Two of those concerts sit within MOSSO: music in motion – the festival within the festival, devoted to experimental music and held across an entire day at the National Film and Sound Archive.

It is the ideal frame for Hill’s practice: a space where the boundaries between disciplines are porous, and where the collaborators who shape her music can be heard as clearly as the notes on the page.

UnderOnBelow: the world beneath our feet

The MOSSO Portrait Concert opens with the world premiere of UnderOnBelow, written...