Australia’s most celebrated living composer will curate, conduct and compose during his tenure, until 2018.

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra has announced the appointment of award-winning Australian composer Brett Dean as the SSO’s first Artist in Residence. Dean, who is considered to be one of the world’s most outstanding composers, will hold the position until 2018, and in addition to writing a major new work for the SSO to be premiered in 2018, will curate a new concert series of contemporary music at the Carriageworks in the Central Sydney suburb of Redfern.

The appointment of Dean, who in addition to being an in-demand composer is also a violist with the Berlin Philharmonic and a respected conductor, is not only a major coup for the SSO but also represents the most ambitious and substantial contemporary music programme of any major arts organisation in Australia. During his residency Dean is keen to stretch the boundaries of Australian musical tastes. “We underestimate the curiosity of our audiences at our peril,” said the composer. “What’s really important to me, and what I really appreciate about this opportunity is being able to show leadership to an audience. If we relinquish our leadership role within classical music then eventually we’ll see fewer and fewer pieces of even mainstream repertoire being programmed. It’s a danger we see with orchestras worldwide: an increasing reluctance to push. I personally think that’s a dead end.” Dean hopes the new concert series will encourage Sydneysiders to explore new and rarely heard repertoire in the way contemporary art, theatre and dance has successfully done. “It’s getting that message out to try new music, because it’s actually really quite fascinating. Classical music hasn’t been particularly good at that. Compared to other art forms, in classical music we’ve always seen ourselves as a museum-type of art. I think it’s great that an orchestra is prepared to say, ‘that’s a part of who we are and what we do, yes. But we can do so much more.’”

SSO Chief Conductor David Robertson has a highly distinguished history of supporting new music, both as the former Music Director of the world’s most revered contemporary music group, Ensemble InterContemporain, from 1992 until 2000, and as the Chief Conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra which recently won a Grammy for its recording of American composer John Adams’ City Noir. However until now the amount of modern music programmed by Robertson with the Sydney Symphony has been relatively modest. The American maestro has been a particular champion of Brett Dean’s music for several years. Speaking of the auspicious appointment, Robertson said, “Brett has such a deep understanding of music – as a creator, performer and programmer – that it is tremendously exciting to look forward to the projects we can dream up together. The freshness and vibrancy in modern classical music is audible in Brett’s own scores and he has an advocate’s ear for the remarkable composers to be found writing mu‎sic today.”

Dean has selected three young Australian composers to showcase in the first year of his residency: Lisa Illean, Alexander Garsden and Natasha Anderson. “It’s so important to give these voices the opportunity to be heard,” Dean said of his selected composers. “These are accomplished artists, but still emerging as far as Australian composition is concerned, and as far as an SSO audience is concerned. They all have a very unique fingerprint, and that’s something about the choice of composers we’re pursuing. It’s music that’s trying to find an original take on the sound world.”

Moving the contemporary music programme out of the Sydney Opera House to the Carriageworks – one of Sydney’s most versatile multi-arts spaces built out of the converted buildings of the old Eveleigh Train Yards – is a crucial part of the SSO’s strategy to revitalise its new music offering. “I think it could be quite significant,” Dean shares. “The Carriageworks offers the opportunity to get really up close and personal with the musicians. We’re still working out how we’re going to configure the space; at least one of the new works has an aspect of installation in it. But we have this wonderful flexibility with this space. It’s very exciting.”

Dean and Robertson will work closely together to curate the Carriageworks programme but Dean will also have the chance to take the podium at the Sydney Opera House to conduct the SSO during his tenure. Among the repertoire he will conduct are some of the major, yet often neglected symphonic works of the 20th Century. “We’re going to be presenting works that are rarely heard in Australia, but this programme is also about revisiting those sort of questions. It’s not just about what’s happening absolutely now, but also about giving audiences the opportunity to hear these major works performed live. It’s about putting some of what’s happening now in to the context of the great music of the recent past.”

The SSO’s new focus on contemporary music bucks the trend of many other musical institutions around Australia, but Dean believes that giving audiences the chance to hear new work is vital to the future of classical music Down Under. “I’m thrilled to see the Sydney Symphony embracing the idea that musicians need to lead the discussion on what we should be performing, instead of making assumptions about what audiences would most like to hear. Not as an ‘up yours’ to the audience by any means, but as a way of engaging in an intelligent debate that’s about what’s possible, and not what we’re no longer prepared to do because we’re scared. It’s music, it’s not going to kill you!”

Full details of the Sydney Symphony’s 2016 season are available on their website.