Ensemble Mania is a new music group based between two cities. Much like its director, composer Dominic Flynn, the collective was born in Hobart and expanded (with a “cross-Bass Strait connection”) to Melbourne. Throughout the year, it flies between the two cities to present programs centred on Australian works.

“Ensemble Mania started out of the dregs of a bunch of different musical things that were happening in nipaluna/Hobart – composers who weren’t getting their music played down there, musicians who wanted to play new music but didn’t know any composers, ensembles that were looking for each other,” Flynn tells Limelight.

Dominic Flynn. Photo © Saxon Hornett

“We were really trying to focus on new local music or stuff from the past that had never been played or that had been played only once, which is a very typical composer story – something gets a premiere and then it goes in the drawer forever. Our first concert featured works by Don Kay, a Tasmanian composer who’s 93 now; this was a portrait concert with music he wrote while studying with Malcolm Williamson in London. That kickstarted our interest in digging up older...