Sunny Kim and Hilary Kleinig hadn’t previously collaborated when Canberra Symphony Orchestra asked them to co-create a new work – but they’re both so excited that they were paired together.

Their composition will receive its premiere in the CSO’s Spark, Bloom! program, which is part of the orchestra’s 2026 Australian Series. The music sprang from a day of conversation and improvisation the two had requested.

Sunny Kim. Photo © Do Hyun Kim; Hilary Kleinig. Photo © Sam Oster

“That day flew by so naturally and organically, it felt really effortless,” Kim tells Limelight. “I was already so inspired by the sounds Hilary was playing when she started, I could immediately imagine something [to match] it. It began like that – we followed our intuition.”

“There’s something really special about having the faith to trust that this is the idea in its purest form [and] going with that first gut instinct,” says Kleinig.

For their first meeting, Kim, a South Korean jazz vocalist, improviser and composer, brought a looper and effects unit with her. Kleinig, a multidisciplinary musician and composer, plugged her electric cello into her own array of effects to...