In Andrew Ford’s program note for The Sea and the Mirror, which violinist Tor Frømyhr and cellist David Pereira will perform for the first time in Canberra on Friday, he dedicates the piece to Kim Williams, partly “because Kim himself has spent much of his time reflecting on the points of contact between life and art” and also as an apology for mentally sketching it during Williams’ 2017 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address.

“He started talking and I’m afraid I did what composers so often do, which is go off into a little world of my own,” Ford tells Limelight. “I just remember feeling a little guilty afterwards, when I thanked him for the talk, most of which I heard.”

Andrew FordAndrew Ford. Photo © Jim Rolon

Ford wrote the The Sea and the Mirror, which will be premiered in a concert at Lewellyn Hall featuring the Side By Side Chamber Orchestra (musicians from the Canberra Symphony Orchestra alongside staff and students from the Australian National University’s School of Music), as part of his residency as the 2018 HC Coombs Fellow.

The ANU’s HC Coombs Fellowship boasts a starry roll call of former recipients that includes Sidney...