Artists
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Weiss CF* conductor and presenter
*Cybec Assistant Conductor Program
Zinia Chan Our Worlds Unfolding
Andrew Aronowicz Komorebi
Rachel Meyers Submergence|y
Robert McIntyre the constellations we draw
This performance opens with our musical Acknowledgment of Country, Long Time Living Here, by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO.
This concert will be livestreamed on YouTube.
Duration: 1 hour, no interval
In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone.
The Cybec Foundation generously provides support for the 21st Century Australian Composers’ Program and Leonard Weiss’ position as Cybec Assistant Conductor Music and Ideas is supported by City of Melbourne.
Century Australian Composers’
Since its inception, MSO’s Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers’ Program has been made possible each year thanks to the generous support of the Cybec Foundation. This program selects participants to be mentored by leading composers across Australia and each participant is commissioned to write a 10-minute piece. These pieces are performed in tonight’s showcase. Following the showcase, one of the participants will be chosen as the MSO’s Cybec Young Composer in Residence for 2026, plus commissioned to write further pieces. The MSO’s Young Composer in Residence is a position also generously funded by the Cybec Foundation.
Since the program was introduced in 2003, more than 80 composers from across Australia have had works commissioned and performed by the MSO. Most have continued onto widely diverse creative practices and the MSO has offered several subsequent commissions to graduates of the program.
Musicians Performing in this Concert
First Violins
Anne-Marie Johnson
Acting Assistant Concertmaster
David Horowicz#
Anna Skálová
Second Violins
Jos Jonker
Associate Principal
Patrick Wong
Cecilie Hall#
Violas
Christopher Moore
Principal
Di Jameson OAM and Frank Mercurio#
Lauren Brigden
Cellos
Elina Faskhi
Assistant Principal
Di Jameson OAM and Frank Mercurio#
Caleb Wong
Double Basses
Benjamin Hanlon
Acting Associate Principal
Di Jameson OAM and Frank Mercurio#
Flute
Wendy Clarke
Associate Principal
Oboe
Michael Pisani Acting Principal
Clarinets
Philip Arkinstall
Associate Principal
Robin Henry
Bassoon
Brock Imison
Principal Contrabassoon
Horns
Nicolas Fleury
Principal
Margaret Jackson AC#
Saul Lewis
Principal Third
The late Hon Michael Watt KC and Cecilie Hall#
Trumpets
Shane Hooton
Associate Principal
Glenn Sedgwick#
Adam Davis
Trombone
Kieran Conrau
Guest Principal
Tuba
Karina Filipi
Timpani
Matthew Thomas Principal
Percussion
Robert Cossom
Drs Rhyl Wade and Clem Gruen#
Harp
Yinuo Mu
Principal
Pauline and David Lawton#
# Position supported by
Leonard Weiss CF conductor and presenter
Australian conductor Leonard Weiss CF has a thriving career fuelled by a passion for both classical and contemporary music. He is proud to continue as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Cybec Assistant Conductor, leading numerous performances including making his debut at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
Leonard champions the work of living composers and has treasured the opportunity to premiere new music in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. He is elated to premiere several pieces with the MSO this year. Beyond the Melbourne stage, in 2025 Leonard will debut with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conduct the Sydney Youth Orchestra’s inaugural Summer Symphony Orchestra, and return for engagements in New Zealand.
Prior to joining the MSO, Leonard was the 2022 New Zealand Assistant Conductor in Residence. He studied with Marin Alsop and received the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s BSO-Peabody Fellowship. Leonard has participated in masterclasses with Riccardo Muti, Gianandrea Noseda, at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Salzburg Festival.
Recent awards include the Mr and Mrs Gerald Frank New Churchill Fellowship, an Australia Council Career Development Grant, and an Ars Musica Australis Arts Fellowship. Leonard was a finalist for 2016 Young Australian of the Year, and was named 2016 Young Canberra Citizen of the Year for Youth Arts and Multimedia.
Composers
Zinia Chan
Zinia Chan is a composer and researcher whose diverse and immersive work captures the connections between the natural environment and humans through recorded sounds, music notations, and extramusical artforms.
In 2024, Chan was accepted for Omega Ensemble’s CoLAB: Composer Accelerator Program, concluding in a sold-out world premiere at the Sydney Opera House. Chan is also a Finalist of the APRA AMCOS and Australian Music Centre’s 2023 Arts Music Awards, and a recipient of the 2023 Catherine Mary Sullivan Scholarship in Music Composition.
Renowned for her cutting-edge, community-minded approach, Chan’s extensive work in contemporary music, research and film has garnered her opportunities with the MSO on feature film calls as Composer Assistant. She has also worked with The Song Company, Gondwana Chorale, Mohworks Films, the Grainger Museum, Science Gallery Melbourne, and The University of Melbourne’s School of Music Psychology.
Chan is currently a Master of Music (Research) composition student at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music under the supervision of Melody Eötvös and Elliott Gyger. She holds a Bachelor of Music with Distinction from Queensland University of Technology and completed her Graduate Diploma in Music (Composition) at The University of Melbourne under Dr Christine McCombe and Dr Brenton Broadstock AM.
Our Worlds Unfolding
“Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their whole lives in the course of a single day.” —Carl Sagan
There’s something about worlds coming together that brings to light the fragility of time. Our Worlds Unfolding is dedicated to those significant moments that pause time and hold space for us; and in return fills us with the desire and courage to embrace uncertainty and move towards the alluring calls of the unknowns.
Life is breathed into this piece through a moment that captures pause as small gestures are then introduced to reflect small moments of blissfulness, beauty, pain, resilience and resolve. Likewise, drawing on the interplay of brief profound moments that unfold, evolve and perish through the course of our lives.
From blended introspective gestural moments, Our Worlds Unfolding awakens and concludes with determined boldness, where eventual worlds collide and dance with push-and-pull of time and disruptions. Evolving rhythmic cells energetically create drive, depth and momentum through the orchestra, musically liberating us from apprehension allowing the listeners to lean into the certainty of the unknown. The ending highlights how momentum and drive itself is a powerful and emotive expression. Particularly in union and togetherness, the connected passages show how our interactions are intertwined and every gesture leap, and choice leads to a change and transformation that shapes the worlds within and around us.
Composers
Andrew Aronowicz
Andrew Aronowicz is a composer and educator based in Naarm, Melbourne. He holds Master’s degrees in both composition and teaching, and enjoys working regularly with both professional and school-age classical musicians.
His music has been performed widely in concerts and festivals around Australia and internationally, by various major ensembles and performers, including the Melbourne, Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, as well as Syzygy and Plexus Ensembles.
Andrew is a passionate advocate for music education in Australia, and is dedicated to supporting music makers of the future. Since 2015 he has been composer-inresidence at the annual Border Music Camp in Albury, NSW. Andrew’s experience as a writer of educational String, Band and Choral music has made him a much-loved composer and musician by educators across Australia, who have commissioned and programmed his works for various school and youth ensemble concerts.
As an educator, Andrew has taught a range of students, from five-year-old budding violinists to lecturing tertiary music students in theory and harmony. Andrew is currently teaching classroom music and strings at Balwyn High School.
A former producer with ABC Classic, Andrew is also a passionate communicator about classical music, and regularly presents talks for the Melbourne Symphony and Australian Chamber Orchestras.
Komorebi
As someone who finds themselves troubled by the intrusive and sometimes relentless buzz of anxiety, I’m often yearning for the calm and clarity that comes from being in nature. One of my favourite places is amongst trees, gazing skyward and listening to the gentle symphony of breeze and birdsong. There’s stillness, tranquillity, but also a feeling that everything is vibrating with life—branches swaying, leaves rustling, insects trilling. I look and listen long enough, and I lose track of my worries as they’re replaced by a feeling of profound connection to the scintillating eternity that surrounds me. I particularly love it when the sun sits at just the right angle so that its light mingles and refracts amongst the leaves of the trees, creating a glittering array of greens mixed with gold.
The Japanese have a word describing this filtering of sunlight through the leaves and branches of trees: ‘Komorebi’. And so, this piece could be described as a musical impression of the beauty and fragility of this phenomenon, as well as the feelings of calm, curiosity, and wonder that it conjures. The world can be such a busy, challenging, and complicated place; the simplicity and poignancy of ‘Komorebi’ can be a welcome antidote. Just like music.
Composers
Rachel Meyers
Rachel Meyers is a sonic explorer whose creative practice is driven by a profound curiosity about the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman worlds. Her work creates rich soundscapes woven from bowed string instruments, field recordings gathered from diverse environments—both terrestrial and aquatic— and the influence of traditional music. A recent and significant focus of her work has been the exploration of water as a creative force, which has deeply informed her compositions and led to the development of new sonic inventions.
Meyers’ background encompasses a diverse range of musical experiences, including folk, experimental, and classical performances, research projects, and composition. She has performed at prominent Australian festivals and events such as Four Winds, Ten Days on the Island, MONA FOMA, and Dark Mofo.
Deeply committed to exploring ecological narratives of place and identity, Rachel believes in the power of art to facilitate tangible community change. Her sound works have been featured in major curated installations at McClelland Art and Sculpture Gallery and Contemporary Art Tasmania.
Submergence|y
From Astrida Neimanis’ hydro-feminist vision of watery being—“As watery, we experience ourselves less as isolated entities, and more as oceanic eddies: I am a singular, dynamic whorl dissolving in a complex, fluid circulation”—emerges Submergence|y This work journeys into the depths, guided by the narrative arc of Edgar Allan Poe’s Descent into the Maelstrom: drawn inexorably towards the eddy, consumed by the vortex, and reborn from the depths. Submergence|y is both the act of descent and the embodiment of that descent—a merging with the fluid world.
Through rich orchestral textures, I explore the terrifying beauty of the ocean’s sublime, its boundless expanse warping time and sound. Open water is boundless, and reflects time and sound in unfamiliar and disarming ways. Without developing new ways to deepen perception of the dynamics of humanity’s interdependence with the ocean, we face an oncoming catastrophe of rising sea levels, ocean acidification and the cataclysmic extinction of marine life.
Join a new generation of giving.
Welcome to Future MSO – an initiative for young philanthropists and music lovers to connect over exclusive opportunities, while supporting the careers of exceptional emerging musicians, conductors and composers at the MSO.
Your tax time donation of $1,000 reveals:
• A community of like-minded, culturally engaged young professionals.
• An annual calendar of events for you and a guest to connect with patrons, MSO musicians and guest artists.
• The inner world of the Orchestra with experiences that bring you closer to the music.
AMPLIFY YOUR IMPACT BY JOINING FUTURE MSO TODAY.
Scan the QR code to join Future MSO today. Or email philanthropy@mso.com.au to discuss your involvement.
Composers
Robert McIntyre
Drawing on nature, important causes, society and the personal, Robert McIntyre (he/him) is an Australian composer who finds, collects and brings awareness to moments, holding space for them in order to achieve a multi-faceted sense of visibility. McIntyre holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours) in Composition with First Class Honours from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, supervised primarily by Prof. Stuart Greenbaum and Dr. Katy Abbott, a Juris Doctor from the Melbourne Law School, and is an Associate Artist represented by the Australian Music Centre.
Described as ‘strikingly contemporary’ (Limelight), accolades include selection to represent Australia at the 2025 ISCM World New Music Days Festival in Portugal, a Wattle Fellowship, the Dorian Le Gallienne Composition Award, the David Henkels Composition Award, as well as several competition wins. McIntyre has strong national and international presence, working with leading ensembles/collaborators, such as Melbourne Recital Centre, Flinders Quartet, Collide and Syzygy Ensemble, and has undertaken other programs including Composing in the Wilderness, AYO National Composition Program and ICEBERG New Music Institute. Notably, in 2024 McIntyre was invited back as the Alumni Speaker for the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Music (FFAM) to deliver a commencement speech to the incoming 1st-year cohort.
McIntyre’s award-winning climate change curation series Our Duty to Care received acclaim following its premiere and co-presentation with the FFAM and Melbourne Law School in 2023 at Hanson Dyer Hall, co-presentation with Tempo Rubato and the National Sustainability Festival in 2024, and will feature in the Melbourne Recital Centre’s 2025 Season.
the constellations we draw
The way in which we have and continue to derive meaning from stars across time is a curious phenomenon. Humans have physically mapped stars to navigate oceans and journey onwards or home, while also drawing deep spiritual and astrological significance from the creation of constellations and their respective lore. Accordingly, I now offer a third accompanying and contemporary commentary on their ecological prevalence and how they act as a reminder of our meaningful yet finite existence—where cosmic structures such as stars, suns and constellations that almost seem eternal, even are not.
This new work draws on newly-commissioned poetry, by my incredible regular collaborator Savanna Wegman, as a direct compositional touchstone and extramusical manifestation of my concept. It structures the work in three sections played attacca capturing these derivations of stars: (1) embarking on a cosmic-mapped journey, (2) reaching a point of profound reflection gazing at the sky, then (3) reawakening in a lush yet urgent realisation of what we take for granted.
Tidal Drawings
A javelin into light. A voyage is born, sprawling on parchment as ink charts the endless contours of tessellated eyes. Each lash suspended for us, riders of ocean.
Here, the winds hush us forwards into blur — Open the way to Azimuth.
Unfolding as afterglows.
Arriving, the Sun flames us awake and fawning, under bare limbs, bright atriums of sky.
Here the eyes rest, open in sudden vastness and in the darkest of lights the elliptical blue embraces — in such pure, fervent silence.
Beyond this breath, falling. Each celestial tide returns us, cocooned in this infinite breath, parted open like a gate and dipped back in cerulean.
We cover our eyes to both: the ever living and ever lasted expanses. Set ablaze our chartings to recast an artificial Dark.
© Savanna Wegman 2024
