This article looks at a creative trajectory in my recent work, an ongoing exploration of how the coordination of and precise interaction between performers in music-performance can be considered a primary compositional parameter (and perhaps compositional material in its own right). This investigation began with a survey of performer interactions in Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps and older music of my own. This led to an interest in the entanglement of ‘instrumental theatre’ and compositional scenarios in which performer behaviours, in relation to coordination and interaction, contribute idiosyncratically (i.e. outside of the more typical interpretation/improvisation models) to the music.

Over the past two decades significant changes in approaches to gender equity have taken place in the fields of contemporary music and music research. However, women in music are still disadvantaged in terms of income, inclusion and professional opportunities. In Australia a national approach to improving gender equity in music has begun to emerge as once-controversial strategies trialled by four tertiary institutions have become established practices. This article discusses successful inclusion strategies for women in music, including the commitment to gender-balanced programming across all concerts at Queensland Conservatorium of Music by 2025, the introduction of mandatory quotas in recital programmes at Monash University, mentoring programmes for women composers at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and the development of coursework devoted to women in music at The University of Western Australia, as well as other initiatives that have emerged from them, both within and beyond the institution. Each approach is examined in the context of broader global discussions around gender and feminism. The public willingness to engage in discussions over sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender discrimination in the workplace that has resulted from the #MeToo movement is cited as key in influencing the engagement of students and professionals with these strategies and subsequent influence on performance practices, project development and presentational formats in new music.

In September 2015, ABC Classic set a target of 5 per cent women composers on air as the beginning of a push to combat serious gender imbalance in the works broadcast on the network. This target has gradually changed broadcast culture, encouraging content makers to champion women's music and allowing for major programming events and goals, and it has led to an increase of women composers broadcast from 2.2 per cent in 2015 to 9.9 per cent in the 2018/19 reporting cycle. This article examines our journey over this time, arguing for targets as a means to enact change and establish concrete outcomes. It explores the ways in which a target has encouraged us to consider gaps in the content offered along with new opportunities to present music by hitherto under-represented composers. It also reflects on the work ahead, acknowledging the ongoing importance of targets in moving towards better gender representation in classical music programming.

Archival evidence indicates that Anthony Gnazzo was a major figure within the Bay Area avant-garde music scene of the 1960s and 1970s who retired from composition by 1983 and has since been largely forgotten. Historical documents reveal, however, that a study of Gnazzo enables us to better understand the complex network of influences and artists working on experimental music in the Bay Area during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. This article outlines Gnazzo's career and work, from his earliest academic compositions to his late electronic pieces, and concludes with a consideration of the ethical and moral issues inherent in musicological research on living subjects, particularly in the case of a composer who consciously avoids discussion of his personal aesthetic or compositional output. Should one study music that appears to have been ‘abandoned’ by the artist?

This article presents selected results from a research project on cello multiphonics at the Hochschule für Musik Basel within which I am producing updated fingering charts in a smartphone application and affiliated online repository. The article details work that has informed this resource and illustrates results that reveal critical questions and point to future areas of interest. I begin by introducing cello multiphonics and contextualising my previous findings, then discuss pitch content, ‘chain’ multiphonics and the balance and intonation of multiphonic components.

A small group of composers and performers are collaborating orally/aurally on the creation of experimental music that eschews written scores (‘living scores’). By charting the overlaps between working methods and relationships – both social and musical – this article endeavours to shed light on how these practices rub against standard modes of documentation, transmission, scholarship and performance. The article begins by mapping out of the orally transmitted collaborative practices of four composers – Cassandra Miller, Pascale Criton, Éliane Radigue and me – as documented through interviews with prominent performer-collaborators such as Deborah Walker, Silvia Tarozzi, Juliet Fraser and Cat Hope. A guiding metaphor frames these practices as gardens and highlights shared thematic concepts such as extended time, hospitality, note-taking and responsibility.

Based on email interviews and the recently published book Music of Possibility, this article considers the work of the Welsh composer Richard Barrett, who turned 60 in 2019. A brief overview of Barrett's work since the late 1980s is offered, alongside discussion of the work-cycle currently in progress: natural causes, based on texts by the late Simon Howard. Among the themes considered are Barrett's interest in working in cycles such as these; aspects of his compositional technique, in particular serialism and heterophony; the influence of popular music; environmental art; and the shadow of Schubert.

The Summers Night Project is an ongoing composer-mentoring programme established in 2018 by musicians Cat Hope and Gabriella Smart, with the support of the Perth-based new music organisation Tura New Music. The project aims to support and mentor emerging Australian female and gender minority composers to create new compositions for performance, with the aim of growing the gender diversity of composers in music programmes across Australia. Three composers were chosen from a national call for submissions, and works were performed by an ensemble consisting of members from the Decibel and Soundstream new music ensembles. Three new works were workshopped, recorded then performed on a short tour of Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, Australia in July 2018. The project takes its name and inspiration from Australian feminist Anne Summers, author of the ground-breaking examination of women in Australia's history Damned Whores and God's Police (1975) and was inspired by her 2017 Women's Manifesto. This article examines the rationale for such a project, the processes and results of the project itself, and plans for its future.

This article explores aspects of the work of the composer Naomi Pinnock, focusing on six works written between 2012 and 2019: String Quartet No. 2 (2012), The Writings of Jakob Br. (2013), Lines and spaces (2015), Music for Europe (2016), The field is woven (2018) and I am, I am (2019). Each work is analysed and the analyses contextualised within a discussion of the works by other artists that form a creative hinterland to Pinnock's music: respectively art from the Sammlung Prinzhorn, paintings by Paul Klee and Agnes Martin, and the poetry of Rachael Boast.

The most prevalent model of musical analysis goes straight from score to sound, without reference to decisions – planned or impromptu – made by the performer as they perform the score. Since 2000 performance analysis by, among others, Nicholas Cook and John Rink, has sought to bridge this gap by analysing performances of works, yet the performer's voice is still absent. Catherine Costello Hirata and Dora Hanninen attempted to capture more experiential qualities in their approach to analysis, yet here too the performer is unable to contribute. There is growing discourse featuring performers speaking about their creative process, however this is generally not framed in a formal analytical space. This article examines the landscape of musical analysis as new models emerge for analysis of the score in its performed realm. It builds on research that presented a formal performance analysis of a score in the context of a performance, and extends the model and ideas expressed to reclaim a space for the performer's experience of a score in musical analysis.

Earlier this year I was contacted by Ellen Fallowfield who asked me to look into multiphonics on the harp. I was curious but also rather sceptical: although I could immediately find multiphonics in several places on the string, I worried that their use would be impractical. This article takes a practical look at multiphonics on the harp from a performer's point of view. I share my initial observations about their production, sound and predictability as well as their relationship to other harmonics on the harp. It is my hope that the article will lead to further investigation of this fascinating topic.

The Vienna State Opera made headlines around the world last December, boasting that it had finally commissioned a full-scale opera by a female composer. Olga Neuwirth, known for her difficult, unrestrained character (both musical and personal), was a curious and adventurous choice for the Wiener Staatsoper, the embassy of a conservative cultural landscape and gatekeeper of highbrow art. Choosing Virginia Woolf's seminal novel about a poet who lives through the ages and who one day miraculously changes sexes was a fitting choice for this maverick, whose work blurs the lines between genius – in all its anachronistic complexities – and fremdschämend, the well-established German equivalent of the facepalm, always scoring particularly high on listicles of ‘quintessential German words’.

Much of contemporary western art music relies on objectivist and individualistic frameworks of intellect which oppose any focus on subjectivity, embodiment or emotion. These approaches deny composers, players and audiences the powerful experiences facilitated by works which are of body and of emotion. We suggest that by facilitating a return to body and emotion in sound we create potential for deep, cathartic, and transformative psychophysiological states. We argue that these states can create shared experiences that directly resist the isolating, homogenising, socially apathetic and narrowing path paved by frameworks of intellect. This refusal can facilitate collectivised movement towards an ethics of care, through mutuality, solidarity and empathy. This extends further than musical practice and builds potential inroads towards greater social and political transformation. We offer a toolkit of actions and frameworks that enable embodied and emotional sound use: intensity, stillness, improvisation, collectivised praxis and uncanoning.