Who better to open new music series Backstage Music’s 2018 season than New York flautist Claire Chase? Billed as “a living space for living music”, Backstage Music – which has moved to its new home in Redfern’s Woodburn Creatives – presents early career musicians alongside established artists and ensembles, with a focus on innovative, challenging and experimental music. After launching with New York group yMusic and local band The Music Box Project in 2016, Backstage’s 2017 season featured cellist Ashley Bathgate as well as a suite of Australian artists, while the 2018 line-up includes the likes of Julian Day, Ensemble Offspring and Phoebe Green – and Claire Chase kicking it all off with a bang.

Claire Chase. Photo © Oscar Smith

The founder of new music collective International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Chase has given the premieres of hundreds of new works, collaborated with composers from the late Pauline Oliveros to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Du Yun, and among the many notches in her belt are a MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant in 2012 and last year’s Avery Fisher Prize – Chase was the first flute player to win the award, joining the ranks of...