In a partnership with Adelaide’s MOD., Chamber Music Adelaide’s 2025 Commissioning Program is inspired by and will premiered in its Forever exhibition, centred on speculative futures and experiences of time. This year’s selected composers are David Kotlowy and Amelia Rooney, who both talk to Limelight about their new works.

Sometimes

“In his essay for the Forever exhibition, Michael Radke observes that time is a cultural construct,” composer David Kotlowy explains.

“We say that music exists in a temporal frame, that it moves from one moment to another in time – our perception of musical movement is manipulated through harmony, tempo, rhythm and expression, by the play of memory and anticipation, and the particularity of the present moment.”

David Kotlowy performing on a microtonal guitar. Photo supplied

With more than 80 original works under his belt and a fascination with cross-cultural collaboration, Kotlowy’s Commissioning Program work, sometimes, for Baroque string trio and guzheng, is an investigation of time – not as a fixed unit of measurement but as something more fluid and personal.

“Time’s efficacy is determined by our cultural and personal experiences as well as our daily emotional well-being; sometimes is inspired by the diverse cultural and personal perceptions of time as expressed through music. also transcending the musical boundaries and disparate expectations of them,” he says.

Kotlowy has long been interested in tuning systems outside of the 12-tone equal temperament system, so the opportunity to again work with Baroque instruments – and with guzheng, for the first time –  is something he’s thrilled to do.

“sometimes draws on traditional Chinese and Japanese musical aesthetics, as well as the harmonic language of early Western music. My aim was to create a work that acknowledges these substantial traditions while also transcending the musical boundaries and disparate expectations of them.”

MOD.’s Forever exhibition. Photo courtsey of MOD.

This playing with temperament and tuning is vital to sometimes’ investigation into the cultural and musical reasons for time as a subjective force – examining how harmony, rhythm, and performance all impact how it is heard and experienced. Kotlowy defines three different categories in his work, which he calls ‘current time’, ‘standard time’, and ‘being time’.

“Current time is built upon the ticking clock – a common pulse generating meter and polymeters. Standard time investigates intonation, tuning systems, harmonic suspension, and resolution. In being time, the performers play independently of each other, employing their own breath cycles to navigate the music.”

MOD’s Forever exhibition is also an important presence in the work. sometimes will be given its world premiere under the kinetic sculpture Star Dreaming in Motion by Gavin Wanganeen and Karl Meyer.

“Gavin explains, ‘In the ceaseless motion of the universe there is rest and quiet,’” says Kotlowy.

“As the performers are breathing, being time, their gestures diminish as if we are on a camera panning out from the scene. We, the Earth, our time — all fade; Star Dreaming in Motion bears witness.”

THE TREES ARE TURNING OFF!

Composer Amelia Rooney calls MOD. “one of the coolest contemporary museums in Adelaide”. With the world premiere of THE TREES ARE TURNING OFF!, she’ll realise a dream she’s had for quite a while.

“The title just came to me when I was driving to my parents’ house and [I thought], ‘That’s cool, I’ll lock that one in the back of my mind. And when this opportunity arose, I thought it’d be a great time to explore what that could mean,” she says.

Amelia Rooney. Photo courtesy of Amelia Rooney

“Trees don’t turn off!,” she laughs. “They are not technological things. But as we’re leaning towards technology more than ever, that blur between what is technology and what is human is very interesting – and something that I’m excited to explore, writing in this space.”

With a live string trio and electronic effects, THE TREES’ musical sensibilities also sit in this space. Rooney routes the live performance through effects pedals and an Ableton session to create electronic noises that gain strength and momentum over the course of the work.

“Over time, I want the electronics to overpower the live music – having the technology mimic this ecological chaos, where it just gets more and more intense as the piece unfolds. I think it’s interesting, and something that I’m hoping will work.”

Balancing different disciplines is part of Rooney’s artistic practice. A current student at the Elder Conservatorium, Rooney is a composer who works across theatre, short film, fixed media, and chamber works. She is also an award-winning playwright and writer, and co-founder of the accessible, inclusive Dead Darling Theatre.

“Sometimes if I’m writing a script, I’ll be thinking of the music that goes over that scene, and I’ll think of it in musical terms, which is kind of cool. And then when writing music, sometimes I’m thinking of the overall narrative of the piece. So they work hand in hand.”

“It’s very interesting merging both my sonic writing and my classical writing together, because I feel like they’re two very different principles. With sonic sounds, I’m like, ‘Cool, this sound is really cool and I’m gonna put it here.’ But with classical music, there’s a more definite set of rules – instruments have notes they can’t play. I feel like, at its core, [an electroacoustic approach] is the closest to what I feel my being is, and how to express that feeling – that sense of self.”

Rooney works a lot in the field of ambient music, which she says demands that audiences “sit and listen” to it. It’s the same approach needed for the Forever exhibition – to fully absorb these visions of speculative futures.

“As a young person looking at the world and the history of people just not listening to each other, and not doing anything about the climate crisis, I’m both hopeful and not hopeful about the future ahead and what it’s going to look like. A lot of the music I write is very existential and reflective of how I’m feeling about what the future looks like. Reflecting what ecological decay looks like is at the forefront of literally everything I think about.”

Perspectives on Forever premieres on 14 November. More information can be found here.