Alex Raineri, the Artistic Director of Brisbane Music Festival, has established a significant footprint through his commitment to commissioning new work, with over 45 Australian pieces receiving premieres at the festival across seven seasons to date. 

Raineri’s ethos regarding commissions celebrates the beautiful diversity of the Australian cultural landscape. “As an artistic director, it is an exciting responsibility to interrogate how music can exist beyond the sphere of its own abstract merits and question how it can speak to contemporary culture more broadly,” he says. “Curation is a powerful medium in which our artform can comment impactfully on the world we inhabit and speak to a world in which we wish to live.” 

Thea Rossen. Photo © Andrew J. Clarke/Edify Media

One of the 2024 BMF commissions is Aragonite, a new work for chamber ensemble by Perth-based percussionist/composer Thea Rossen, which has its premiere this month in a concert of the same name. 

Speaking to Limelight about her compositional practice, Rossen says, “As a percussionist, improviser and composer, I have developed a practice of bringing sounding objects and instruments together with lighting and staging to build immersive,...