Music

Kia ora,

I’m excited to share that my work for piano trio, convergency, is in the running to be performed at the International Symposium of Contemporary Music’s 2023 World New Music Days Festival taking place in South Africa later this year. Six works by NZ-based composers were put forward by CANZ (Composers Association of New Zealand), which is a member organisation of ISCM, and at least one out of the six will be selected to be performed as part of the festival programme.

Fingers crossed that I’ll have some more good news to share when May comes along!

Kia ora e hoa mā,

Pleased to share that there was a packed audience at Auckland Youth Choir’s recent concert at St-Matthew-in-the-City.

My piece Let My Country Awake opened the programme. I was asked to do a short intro before the performance which was definitely a step out of the comfort zone for this introverted composer but a challenge is always good! It was a new experience for me to sing my own work and I hope I get the chance to do it again sometime.

I’m thrilled that AYC chose to perform my work and it was lovely to sing three other new works by young Kiwi composers who are also in the choir.

Looking forward to my next musical outing later this month in Wellington with the NZSO.

– Jessie

Incredibly humbled to have been selected to receive an APRA Professional Development Award for 2022 alongside five other Kiwi songwriters and composers.

The grant will enable me to work with brilliant composer/sonic artist Garling Wu on a collaborative project bringing together our backgrounds in contemporary composition, songwriting and electroacoustic and exploring the interplay between these musical mediums. Throughout the project I’ll be learning from Garling and immersed in the world of electroacoustic composition, with the goal of incorporating this into my practice moving forward.

Feeling grateful and excited for what’s to come!

You can read about all the recipients and their work here.

Happy to share that my piece convergency has been selected as a winning work in NZTrio’s 2021 Composing Competition, AudioVisualise! The trio will be recording the pieces when Covid allows – I’m really looking forward to hearing their performance.

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