BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
One of the most defining features of the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra is its willingness to embrace creative risk.
And what could be a bigger risk for an orchestra than to invest in a composer with minimal experience in writing for one?
The reward of this risk is to help create an Australian composer who can write for the orchestra. In doing so, it gives audiences the opportunity to experience something they would never have heard, and musicians to play something they would never have played.
This positive risk is the backbone of the WSO’s Young Composer Award, which is now entering its 23rd year. The world premiere of its newest winner will be unveiled in a performance on September 27 in the Hymn of Praise program.
By taking a chance on new Australian voices in orchestral composition, WSO actively helps shape the voices of our musical landscape. These voices may continue to have something to say as they grow in front of, and alongside, Australian audiences through the next generations.
The name Ella Macens may sound out of place at this point, because she’s not a new voice: she’s a highly accomplished Australian composer.
This year alone, Ella was commissioned for ABC Classic’s 50th anniversary concert; her work My Heart On Yours premiered to thousands of listeners in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl (“an overwhelming and transformative experience,” Ella tells CutCommon).
The Space Between Stars – her second orchestral piece – also rose to prominence in this year’s ABC Classic 100: Greatest of All Time concert, and three recent performances with San Francisco Symphony.
As for Ella’s first orchestral composition, FLIGHT?
A creative risk.
Ella won the 2017 Young Composer Award, and her work was premiered and recorded by WSO. Before writing FLIGHT, she “didn’t have any prior orchestral experiences”.
Her winning composition was heavily supported by Willoughby City Council, APRA AMCOS, and Fine Music 102.5. Ella says it was “the first time my orchestral music had ever been publicly presented in concert”.
She had composed a body of work for choir and small chamber ensembles – but had “never taken command of orchestral forces before”.
Now, FLIGHT returns to the WSO stage almost a decade after her award – and it’s programmed in the same concert that will announce the orchestra’s 2026 Young Composer Award winner.
“I feel so excited!” Ella tells CutCommon.
“It’s a beautiful thing when life offers us opportunities to reflect on where we were, and where we are now.
“Or more, who we were, who we are now – and reflect on the ways in which we have grown and evolved.”
While story of FLIGHT culminated in the WSO’s performance, its backstory is one of talent, hard work, and experimentation.
Ella, then 25, was mentored by renowned Australian composer Matthew Hindson AM who “suggested I might start by orchestrating an existing work to take the pressure off conceiving the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic elements simultaneously while grappling with the orchestration, allowing me to focus solely on exploring colour”.
She went on to develop and orchestrate her earlier ideas stemming from a solo marimba work for award-winning percussionist Claire Edwardes OAM.
That piece, VERVE, was “the perfect piece to anchor my first orchestration to”.
Ella also composed with the skills she gained from her Master of Music (Composition), which she was undertaking at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was one of the first participants in its Composing Women program, and also wrote music for soloists and ensembles whenever she could get the chance.
“It was an exhausting and intense period of time, but one that many emerging composers commit their entire energy to for the best chance of sustained impact and success.”
And with her WSO win, it worked. Ella describes the resulting FLIGHT as “instruments chatting and conversing with each other throughout”.
“That might be how I describe FLIGHT – one big conversation taking place on stage before the audience, one sweeping narrative unfolding over time.”
FLIGHT quickly took on a life of its own, progressing beyond VERVE and gathering new inspiration in Ella’s experiences, as well as nature and the elements. New musical colours arose, and the piece “grew wings and started to soar”.
“As the orchestration unfolded, my mind became hooked on visualising the act of flying in all its forms – soaring, diving, gliding, spinning, hovering, rising, falling. I imagined birds flying in our skies, diving in and out of lakes and forests and soaring high over mountain peaks.”
With FLIGHT, Ella soared too. Because the WSO rewarded her for exploring the new textures and timbres of orchestral composition, her musical voice developed into something new – and it still leaves a lasting impact on the music she writes today.
Ella describes how FLIGHT became “sweeping and soaring and deeply cinematic, and set the tone for much of my orchestral music to come”.
Importantly, it helped her develop a compositional approach that “has transpired in every single one of my orchestral works that followed”.
Now, years on from her WSO win and her own student days, Ella is an Associate Lecturer in Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
WSO’s creative risk paid off — and the wider impact on Australian composition has been significant.
With the 2026 winner’s work unveiled at the Hymn of Praise program, the orchestra continues the tradition. New composers, like Ella once was, will also have the chance to build their confidence and voices in Australian music.
“Australia is awake to the vibrant volume of new contemporary classical music being created, and I have so much gratitude and praise for the ensembles and organisations who continue to champion emerging composers through experiential opportunities,” Ella says.
FLIGHT will be performed this September alongside Legend of Chang’e and Hou’yi by Daniel Gao, 2026 Young Composer Award winner. Dr Sarah Penicka-Smith will conduct the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra with works by Mendelssohn and Miloslav Pěnička also on this Hymn of Praise program.
Hear these two Young Composer Award-winning works when Willoughby Symphony Orchestra performs Hymn of Praise, 2pm September 27 at The Concourse, Chatswood.
Images supplied. Ella in Latvija captured by Tenis Dimants.
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