Cameron Lam celebrates five years of curating the Australian Art Music playlist featuring music across Classical, Jazz and Sound Art.

Cameron Lam celebrates a kaleidoscope of colours across Classical, Jazz and Sound Art in this month’s Australian Art Music playlist.

Cameron Lam explores the string quartet in this month's playlist of Australian art music.

Part marathon, part tasting plate, part John Cage’s Musicircus, Lyle Chan’s 12-hour festival will see Australia’s most innovative music-makers converge on City Recital Hall.

Australian music, Ross Edwards celebrates a milestone birthday, and a new music micro festival in CRH’s 2018. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The terms ‘new music’ and ‘contemporary classical music’ are now redundant. For John Davis, ‘art music’ is a better alternative.

Lyle Chan, Peter de Jager, Speak Percussion, Moorambilla Voices and Tura New Music among the winners at this year's awards.

Composer Lyle Chan explains how he won the blessing of the 96-year-old whose first crush was Benjamin Britten. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

In the first of a series of essays, film-maker Nicholas Searle explores contemporary Australian music. Discovering exciting new locally-made music was a task I neglected for years – and stretched as most of us are between family, work and life, I don’t think I’m the only one.   I make television for a living, and work on shows like Grand Designs Australia, New Inventors, Catalyst, Mythbusters and River Cottage Australia. Music is integral for these shows, but only to keep the story moving, to cover gaps. Music for television is like grease for a car – critical, but you don’t want the passengers to notice it. Until recently that didn’t worry me all that much. But in August I read a tweet about Julian Burnside. The barrister come human rights superhero had commissioned something called Wind Farm Music, dedicated to Tony Abbott. It had premiered just the day before at the State Library of Victoria, and social media was awash with retweets and videos. The music was a brilliantly clever mash-up of every great classical tune you’ve heard. Burnside’s cheeky title was a stroke of genius. Lyle Chans Wind Farm Music I searched out the composer – his name was Lyle Chan. On…

‘Wind Farm Music – dedicated to Tony Abbott’ is described by Burnside as “art in service of political protest.”

Eclectic mix with Latin spice manages to overshadow Philip Glass premiere.

Composer Lyle Chan reveals the startling effect of Sydney siege on the creation of his new orchestral work. Untitled (Dec 2014) was begun as a ‘party piece’ for orchestra. When the Queensland Symphony Orchestra asked if I had a piece to contribute to its new music initiative, Current, I wanted to give them a fun, glittering showpiece. I wrote about 3 minutes of high- energy frolicking, almost mischievous music before, out of nowhere, came the Sydney hostage crisis.    I tried to ignore it but got absorbed into watching it unfold on TV. Martin Place is a 10-min walk from my home across Woolloomooloo Bay and I’m there a few times a week. That day I rescheduled my meetings in the area because it was out of bounds, surrounded by police, but my friends who worked inside the cordoned area were not allowed to leave, which distressed them because of speculations a bomb could go off at any time. I went to bed that night with no further information and woke early the next morning to news of the saved and the killed. I walked to Martin Place that morning and saw the start of the floral tributes. As I…