Book chapter: Programming with Gender Parity in Call-Based New Music Festivals. Kouvaras, L., Grenfell, M., & Wlliams, N. Eds. A Century of Women’s Composition: Music Against the Odds. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022.
Gender diversity in new art music festival programming has been a topic of heightened interest since the 2016 Gender Research in Darmstadt (GRID) discussions, which focused on the lack of female composers represented in the archives of the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. GRID’s public nature shone a light on the extent to which new music programming is male-dominated, which has led to many directors worldwide making an effort to address gender disparity in programming. Initially, it may seem that open-access and call-based festivals will have difficulty reaching gender parity, due to having less control over programming than curated festivals. However, call-based festivals with peer-review processes can be effective at mitigating bias and achieving gender parity. This chapter uses Tilde New Music and Sound Art Incorporated’s (Tilde’s) call-based new music festival as a case study in gender-equal programming of both composers and performers. It provides an account of the Darmstadt discussions, an overview of programmes aimed at promoting change, and an overview of methods for programming with gender parity. It discusses Tilde’s “focus area” method, encouraging applicants to consider programming more works by female, non-binary, intersex, and transgender artists.
Masters paper: Tertiary Music Education for People With Disability: A Framework for Access. National Institute of Dramatic Art & Disability Innovation Institute UNSW, 2022.
This report proposes a framework for tertiary music education providers in Australia to increase the accessibility of their services for people with disability. The research combines best practice recommendations in education and live music performance by drawing on national and international leaders in these fields. The current research points to a gap in literature regarding best practices for accessibility in tertiary music education, and that filling this gap may help to redress the underrepresentation of musicians and composers with disability in the Australian music industry. The study was undertaken during a placement at the Disability Innovation Institute UNSW (DIIU) as part of a Masters in Cultural Leadership at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. The Director of the DIIU, Professor Jackie Leach Scully, supervised the research.
The DIIU is dedicated to disability research across multiple disciplines. It is “grounded in inclusive research where people with disability are involved not just as participants, but as co-creators of knowledge” (DIIU 2021). Staff members of the DIIU are leaders and advocates in their various fields, and a placement at the DIIU offered expert knowledge in disability inclusion as well as observation of leadership in action within a tertiary education context. This foundation was then expanded upon to include interviews with national and international leaders in accessible tertiary arts education and accessible music.
The findings indicate that by adopting the principles of Universal Design for Learning, best practice in live music accessibility, and cultural change through staff training and support, tertiary music education providers may be able to improve the experience of all students as well as provide increased access for students with disability. These three focus areas work together to remove barriers and take the onus of responsibility for access off the students.
Conference paper: Programming with Gender Parity in Call-Based New Music Festivals, Gender Diversity in Music Making Conference, Monash University, 6-8 July 2018.
Gender diversity in new music festival programming has been a topic of interestsince the 2016 Gender Research In Darmstadt (GRID) (Ashley Fure) discussions, and has since led to many festivals worldwide making an effort to address gender
disparity in programming, mostly with regard to female-identifying composers. Methods for change in the genre, both for festivals and more broadly, have been put forward by Georgina Borne and Ashley Fure (Born 2017), Cat Hope (2017), and others, however many open-access and call-based festivals who have less control over their programming have difficulty reaching gender parity. This paper discusses the method used by Tilde New Music and Sound Art in their call-based new music festival for gender-equal programming of both composers and performers.
The program for the Tilde New Music Festival is collated from responses to a call for performances and installations including notated and improvised music, sound art, and computer music. Applicants are requested to consider the festival’s focus areas
which in the 2017 call included works by female, transgender, intersex and non-binary composers and sound artists, encouraging artists of all genders to consider gender issues in their preparation for projects and recitals. EOIs were assessed by a panel of equal gender representation, and the organisation has near-parity on their committee (currently 12:9 female to male). Tilde has historically achieved gender parity in their festival performers with little concerted effort, and their 2019 festival program will feature parity of both performers and composers. This paper analyses Tilde’s past programming statistics in comparison to other festivals and organisations and attempts to pinpoint aspects of the organisation’s operations that enable a more equal gender representation.
Conference paper: Authenticity in the Creative Use of Field Recordings. Ecoacoustics Congress, Griffith University, 24-27 June 2018.
This talk will question the perception of authenticity in the creative use of field recordings and identify the key factors for which a work may be considered valuable and creditable. It will look at the practice of Hildegard Westerkamp, Barry Truax, and other composers in the field of acoustic ecology and attempt to outline the benefits of different approaches to field recordings, addressing the following questions: Is it inappropriate for an artist to use field recordings that they did not collect themselves? Is a work with processed recordings better or more valuable than those without processing? Is the role of the artist to give the listener a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding a particular recording, or can they simply use the environment for artistic inspiration? It contends that through examining the content of a field recording the artist gains a deeper understanding of the environment and issues that impact it, and is therefore in better stead to communicate that message in and around their work. However, the artist’s job is varied and ever-changing, and their choice to engage with field recordings without close examination does not make their work or their artistic voice less valid. Many electroacoustic composers dissect field recordings to inform the harmonic content of other instruments or layers in their works. Is this practice intended to affect the listener’s perception of the material, or is the current trend of data sonification just perceived to be less abstract than a purely intuitive response to field recordings and therefore more authentic?
Conference paper: Locating and Utilising Inherent Qualities in an Expanded Sound Palette for Solo Flute, Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society Annual Conference, 2-3 October 2015.
In the search for an idiosyncratic improvisatory language of solo flute performance, it is sometimes necessary to move beyond the scope of technique covered by traditional and extended techniques into the world of instrument-extension through computers. To this end, Bennett’s creative work has led to exploration of new electroacoustic techniques, searching for ways to expand the available sonic palette. This presentation will demonstrate an electronically-extended flute performance utilising Giles’ Spectral Domain Microsound Amplification Software(SDMAS) in real-time. The SDMAS amplifies soft sounds relative to loud, by real-time input, shifting the partials by amplitude around an amplitude-based pivot point. The result is that these otherwise-inaudible partials are brought up to be audible alongside the higher amplitude partials, which drastically alters the perceived timbre of the instrument or instruments being treated. This allows the performer/composer to not only discover, but exploit a greater range of timbres than would be available by an acoustic instrument. Some examples relating to flute are the amplification of soft, closed-hole and whistle techniques, as well as expanding the soft partials that form integral but otherwise imperceptible parts in loud techniques such as jet-whistles and traditional technique. The authors will discuss the sonically enriched results and how it has led to the development of new performative works and an idiosyncratic improvisatory language based on this hyper-instrument configuration.
Honours research project: Discovering the Contemporary Relevance of the Victorian Flute Guild, Monash University, 2012.
10,000-word research project conducted as part of a Bachelor of Music (Honours) at Monash University. The study aimed to determine the contemporary relevance of the Victorian Flute Guild. It contains an overview of the history of the Guild and a discussion of its four main aims, with reference to interviews and a questionnaire sent to Guild members.