The Australian String Quartet continues their Australian Anthology series with South Australian composer Anne Cawrse’s A Room of Her Own. The third movement, Anon, featured in this month’s playlist, flows energetically between grace and dynamism – maintaining momentum with precision and ease. This sinks wondrously into the broody sonic palette of Spinning forth – Sarabande by Paul Cutlan performed by The Marais Project.

Of the playlist’s featured ABC Fresh Start commissions, the work of 2021 Don Banks Music Award winner William Barton stands out. Kalkani, performed with co-composer Véronique Serret, evokes connections between sky and earth in a gently unfurling horizon of sound. Whereas Dylan Crismani’s Shades of Blue draws from the sounds of the dunes and oceans of the Kaurna coastline. This leads to a detailed, all encompassing, textural wash performed by the composer and pianist Gabriella Smart, realised by ABC producer Jakub Gaudasinksi.

Four of 2021’s Art Music Fund recipients are lined up in the May playlist, creating an interesting quartet of pieces speaking on nature (figuratively or otherwise). The constantly morphing colours of Tilman Robinson’s The Word for World is Forest gives way to the sprawling ostinatos of Brenda Gifford’s Plover Bird and Ellen Kirkwood’s wildly varied jazz suite [A]part, before dissolving into Alexandra Spence’s fluid, electroacoustic soundscape, Tidewater I.

Other highlights this month include the life-giving bass of Kate Pass’ Nahafsi, Daniel Rojas’s gritty SalTango for the Baldini Quartet, Nardi Simpson’s The Binary, a spacious work for Scott Davie, and Stu Hunter’s The Bubble which brings me back to jazz-tinted echo of 2020’s lockdowns.

I hope you enjoy some of the new faces and sounds on the Aussie Art Music playlist this month – It’s been an exciting one to research and construct. If you’re looking for more to listen to, the full Australian Art Music Archive has also been updated on Spotify (now over 70 hours of music!).

Join me next month for the resonance of Australian string quartets.

– Cam