BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you were curating a music festival for the first time, what would you choose to include on your program?
Emerging composer-performers Sophie Van Dijk and Liam Mulligan have gone all out for their new Konzertprojekt mini-festival Light Qualities, which will feature in Sydney’s large-scale Vivid arts fest.
The two co-curators have teamed up to present 11 new commissions, all of which come from Australian composers.
You’ll hear works from talent such as Maddy Briggs, Shaun Sheena Premnath, Rhys Little, and Gabrielle Cadenhead (among others).
The music will be distributed across a series of four audiovisual events responding to the theme of light: Saturation, Greyscale, Contrast, and Brightness.
We wanted to learn more about Sophie and Liam’s co-curatorial journey for Light Qualities. The two artists collaborated on this interview, and here’s what they have to share together.
Liam and Sophie, tell us all about Konzertprojekt. What’s the ethos, and how can we see this reflected in Light Qualities? (Pun intended.)
Nice pun! We are a group of composers and performers passionate about getting new music out in the world.
We love to share music that we have written, but we are also excited about sharing music by other Australian composers. We are a group of emerging musicians, and believe that it is important to support other musos in a similar position.
These values are reflected in the fact that the music presented in Light Qualities is all Australian, features 11 brand new commissions by Konzertprojekt members and other emerging composers; and features all Sydney-based emerging performers.
Talk us through the curatorial process. Which emerging musicians did you decide to work with, and how did you go about selecting them from a curatorial perspective?
The process has been pretty huge. It started with an idea and a grant application, and will end with overseeing four concerts and ensuring they run smoothly. In between, there have been artistic decisions, logistical decisions, composing, music-making and so on. It has been quite a journey since this time last year!
We decided to work with people whose music we respected and admired, and who we have enjoyed working with in the past. We didn’t put a general call-out for collaborators, rather we approached some people who are passionate about making innovative new music and who have something unique to say.
We intentionally chose people who we haven’t seen featured as often, hoping to give them a platform to share their music.
We also wanted each concert to present something different, reflecting the diverse new music scene in Sydney. So, we looked to our colleagues who bring something different to the table.
In our correspondence, you’d further mentioned that you see your Light Qualities festival as a chance to share new music with new audiences. You are also putting on these concerts for free. Why is it important to welcome everybody to hear new music in its many forms?
A lot of live music performances, especially in the classical/art music scene, are usually inaccessible due to pricing. One of the best things about Vivid in general is the fact that viewing the installations around Sydney is mostly free, and we think that being able to showcase new, interesting and, most importantly, local-grown Australian art music should be accessible.
It will also give people who don’t usually come to these types of concerts a reason to, especially without breaking the budget.
How closely did you work with the composers of the 11 newly commissioned works that’ll be premiered at the festival?
Not very closely! We decided to give composers some freedom to respond to the themes of their respective concerts in the way that they felt best reflected the theme and their musical voice. We allocated their theme and instrumentation as well as indicated some of the other pieces that would be included in the program, and then left them to it to work their musical magic!
We also gave each composer the autonomy to determine how closely they worked with the performers for their pieces. Generally, there were a number of workshop sessions or initial rehearsals followed by revisions of music, although this varied between our commissions.
From multimedia performances to string quartets and plenty in between, curating such a large-scale event must be an enormous logistical affair.
It has been pretty massive! Let’s just say that there have been countless spreadsheets, runsheets, emails, and meetings to co-ordinate the many elements — from exactly how many microphones we needed, to where we were going to source our lights, to how many programs we were going to print!
Thankfully, it has been a team effort: we two have split the work between us, and have been supported in planning by the fabulous Kathryn Lynch from [venue] St Stephen’s Uniting Church.
The biggest challenge was that we were doing everything as curators for the first time, so it has been a huge learning curve. We were both surprised by the number of tasks that we never anticipated, but that cropped up during the process.
Another challenge was delegating tasks — knowing what to ask our team to do, and when to ask them to do it, and then trusting that they will do what we have asked.
There are many themes across your events, such as ‘Saturation’ and ‘Greyscale’. Beyond the visual connotations, what do these themes mean to you, and how did you select the music to work into them?
The beauty of each of the themes is that they are ambiguous and multi-layered in meaning. Each individual can bring their experience and understanding to interpret the deeper meaning for each of them.
The multi-faceted meanings also made our jobs simpler when selecting the pieces: it gave us freedom to view music that we enjoy or find interesting through various lenses, and find ways to fit them into the themes in unexpected ways.
For us, the music that we wanted to include came first, and how to fit them into the themes of our concerts came second. We also partnered with ensembles featured in the festival, asking them to take on an element of the curatorial role and include music in the program that they enjoy playing and find interesting.
What responsibility do you feel curators have to challenge traditional listening behaviours in Australian audiences?
We are still learning as curators. We can’t change behaviours or listening habits in a concert or festival. We can only present music that we think is engaging and, hopefully, get people excited about the possibility of hearing music that they haven’t heard before, in concert contexts that they haven’t experienced before.
Find out more about the program and the four Konzertprojekt events Saturation (May 25), Greyscale (May 31), Contrast (June 6), and Brightness (June 14) on the website.
This Vivid mini-festival is a collaboration with venue St Stephen’s Uniting Church, and some musicians include Quart-Ed and Ensemble Terra.
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