The Australia Council has announced the latest recipients of a unique residency for musicians and composers offered through a partnership with the UKARIA Cultural Centre in the Adelaide Hills.

The partnership supports residencies for up to ten days, and provides $10,000 to support the creation of new work.

Following the success of the two residencies offered in its inaugural year, UKARIA extended its support to offer three residencies this year.

CEO of UKARIA Alison Beare said the quality of artistic teams proposing residency projects was impressive.

“We were really happy with the response to the initial call for applications last year but this year the number and quality of proposals has increased again. This strong response confirms the value of this sort of partnership and we are really pleased to be working with these artists and the Australia Council,” she said.

Artists in residence in 2019:

Composer Thomas Meadowcroft will work with an international team featuring Speak Percussion (AU), Senyawa (IDN), Bani Haykal (SGP) and Kamrul Hussin (MYS). The team will develop a work for premiere in 2020, featuring combinations of instruments from traditional Balinese, Javanese and Malaysian gamelan ensembles to instruments featured in country and western music (pedal/lap steel guitars, keyboards, drum kits etc.) along with tape machines, transistor radios and home organs.

Composer Hilary Kleinig will use the residency to develop “The Lost Art of Listening”, a major project investigating how people experience and value music in an age of 24-hour connectedness and distraction. The work is proposed as a 60 min performance piece for prepared piano – played by Erik Griswold (QLD) – and 32-part audience-played smartphone choir. Kleinig will be working with tech/arts company Sandpit (SA) and developer Steve Berrick (WA) on the creation of a purpose-built smartphone choir app.

Composer Andrew Schultz will develop “Dark Well”, an immersive site-specific composition of about 90 minutes duration for 2 pianos, visual and audio projections and lighting design. The work consists of a music score which will be performed live with some pre-recorded sounds, amplification and various extensions to normal performance technique. The work is intended for staging in a dark space such as a quarry, silo, water tank, mine shaft, or a cave.

Australia Council Arts Practice Director for Music Paul Mason thanked UKARIA for their continued generosity in providing a unique location and financial support for artists to develop new work.

“We are very pleased to be working in partnership with UKARIA to provide artists with funds and time to develop new work in such a special environment.”

Residents will have exclusive access to facilities including a state-of-the-art recital centre, and adjacent accommodation in the Adelaide Hills, as well as financial support.

UKARIA is ideally located in Mt Barker, and provides a unique regional setting, only 30 minutes from Adelaide, a designated UNESCO City of Music.