Of Paradise Lost, bassoon concerto 

Jack Schiller, bassoon

Vasily Petrenko, conductor

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

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Live-streamed performance of my bassoon concerto Of Paradise Lost on July 15 2022

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"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" is probably the most famous line from John Milton's epic poem of 1667 Paradise Lost, and is the text from which this concerto takes its name. The piece isn't programmatic, but more reflects a relationship of the bassoon as an imperfect protaganist/antagonist to both the concept of heaven and hell as presented by the orchestra.

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The concerto casts the role of the bassoon in two ways in two movements; one movement as subjected to heaven, the other at peace in hell.

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Destructive Interference for flute solo - Lily Bryant, flute

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Lily Bryant discussing and performing an excerpt of Destructive Interference in anticipation of the works' presentation at the May 2022 ANAM Set Festival.

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Below is a complete performance of the work, recorded at the Melbourne Recital Centre. This work was made possible by RISE Funding, the Australian National Academy of Music and ANAM flautist Lily Bryant, with the recording made possible by producer Duncan Yardley and engineer Russell Thomson.

Liebeslied for viola solo - Katie Yap, baroque viola

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This piece was written in October 2015 and was premiered by Katie Yap in Melbourne in June 2019.

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Liebeslied is a miniature for solo viola in homage to Kreisler’s salon pieces for violin and piano. In them Kreisler paints a whimsical, romantic and sentimental notion of love, so in tribute to that Liebeslied is like an ugly cousin to those works, trying to capture the all the things he left out about love because of course it’s not as simple as he portrays.

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If they knew for small orchestra - Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, cond. Matthew Coorey

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Performed and recorded live in January 2020, and made possible by the Cybec Foundation as supporters of the Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program.

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This is a piece in two parts - if they knew and a place to keep you - about the reasons to keep secrets; fear and sacrifice.

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Performed and recorded live by the Flinders Quartet in February 2019

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This work is broadly a life cycle in 4 parts that begins with the idea of something coming out of hibernation, and eventually fading into still life photographs. 

 

This excerpt is taken from the beginning of the second part, "a nocturne for creepy crawlies".​

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Live performance by the Flinders Quartet in December 2017 at the Docklands Library

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Shapes is a collection of 7 short movements for string quartet that uses different shapes as a starting point for portrait pieces of different people, objects and phenomena;

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lines - spheres - triangles - palindrome - stars - geometrical shapes - lines II

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