Summers Night Project offers mentoring for female composers

Summers Night Project is a new initiative to tackle gender parity in the ranks of Australian composers by offering mentoring to create new works for performance.

It is open to female composers of any genre in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria.

Summers Night Project is a partnership by APRA AMCOS, Tura, Monash University, and new music ensembles Decibel (WA) and Soundstream (SA).

Three composers, each based in the three states, will be chosen to be part of the program, with the aim of growing the pool of female composers in music programs Australia-wide.

Mentors are:

Cat Hope, Melbourne composer and flute and bass player and Decibel Artistic Director;

Gabriella Smart, Adelaide pianist and Soundstream Artistic Director;

Rebecca Erin Smith, who specialises in collaborative media and concert works experimenting with sound;

Becky Llewellyn, Adelaide based composer who in 1991 hosted the first Composing Women’s Festival in Adelaide, a ground-breaking celebration of Australian composers in many genres including Indigenous women’s music from Central Australia. The festival went on to be celebrated in several other Australian cities.

Stuart James, composer, pianist, percussionist, electronics performer and designer based at WAAPA, Edith Cowan University.

Tristen Parr, cellist, composer and sound designer who writes music for dance and performs in Decibel.

Derek Pascoe, lecturer in Jazz theory and Improvisation across the Jazz, Classical and Contemporary disciplines at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide.

The mentors will work with the three mentees to create a new work.

Mentees may also propose to be part of the ensemble playing a music instrument and be involved in the performance of all works in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne in July.

Summers Night Project was inspired by the works of Anne Summers, author of the ground-breaking examination of women in Australia’s history, Damned Whores and God’s Police.

In 2017 she released a Women’s Manifesto intended as a blueprint to create equality for women in Australia, and it articulates clear goals for change, one of which was the right to participate fully and equally in all areas of public life.

Deadline for submissions is March 5, full details at tura.com.au.