Following in the footsteps of Kate Moore and Julian Day, up-and-coming Brisbane-based composer Connor D’Netto is the latest in a line of Australian composers to benefit from time spent at one of the Bang on a Can summer festivals held each year at MASS MoCA, the uber-cool Museum of Contemporary Art located in a converted Print Works factory building in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Connor D’Netto. Photo © Ray Roberts

In 2017, under the watchful eye of BOAC founding composers Julia Wolfe, David Lang and Michael Gordon, D’Netto not only made a new musical friend – American violinist Shannon Reilly (currently violin professor at University at Buffalo – but he also got to work with her on (and sneakily record) his very first solo work, Susurrus. It was an experience he describes as “transformative”.

Now, the short work has been reworked and released on BandCamp with first day profits being donated to Black Rainbow, an organisation specialising in suicide prevention and improved social outcomes for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBQTI community. Limelight caught up with D’Netto to find out how the work has developed over time, his relationship with...