MEET THE COMPOSERS

Josep H Franklin

Joseph Franklin is a composer and performer from regional Victoria, currently based in Narrm/Melbourne. His work draws on post-human and ecologically informed understandings of historical and contemporary creative practice, and spans improvised, notated music, experimental and sound art.

Franklin has composed for a range of ensembles including the Australian Youth Orchestra, Flinders Quartet, Ensemble Nouveau and Geist Quartet. Along with leading his own projects, he is a member of new music ensemble The Music Box Project and co-founder of experimental performance group The Opera Company. He has performed in the United States, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Turkey and Australia.

Described as “the avant-garde of today” (The Weekend Australian), his 2019 release Amen was recorded in NYC with Marc Hannaford and Satoshi Takeishi. His chamber opera Jouska, was performed by The Music Box Project at BIFEM in 2019—which received the award for excellence in experimental music at the 2020 Art Music Awards. “Jouska was the standout work for its integration of music and theatrical aspects and the variation of compositional techniques” (Classik On).

You Are Meadow

You are meadow, but once you were an open cut in a place no one wants to remember. You are the ashes of a brass band, too few opportunities for the young. The shadow of my instrument. You are lambs eating from morning hands. At night, you are the absence of a dog, of a body, of play. For the women in the haunted hills, mothers of coal and prehistory, they are the stronghold of a working class. You do not sing ecological laments or paint landscapes into notes. You spring in perpetual meadows and linger in the already-past. The concrescence of the orchestra in two parts, only to cut once again. the beauty and the magnitude, of this special place in Australia.