Andrew Batt-Rawden - Biography

One of the best decisions I made in my life was to become a composer. At the age of about 10 I knew that I wanted to play oboe because of Ennio Morricone’s “Gabriel’s Oboe”… after getting the CD and playing the work on repeat for a couple of years, my parents got the hint and, despite the considerable cost for a family like ours, I was allowed a student oboe, made of plastic probably, to unashamedly honk on… until I got a gold and mahogany Tom Sparkes Oboe, a professional instrument, an instrument made in Australia, when it was evident that this was going to be a significant part of my future.

It was mainly thanks to Jim Coyle and Brett Foster that I was able to survive high school, my music teachers were mentors and later became my friends. Jim told me to “just improvise every day”, and so I’ve tried over the years to do so, on whatever I had, or my voice alone… or just in my own imagination. Under their tutoring during high school I was able to get to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for Composition… mum told me to follow my heart and having “outing” myself as “gay” when I was 16 (after so many years of social stigma at school), I think she really just wanted me to be happy, and (despite my good grades) didn’t push me into my other interest at the time; neuropsychology.

Skip forward a few years and I’ve graduated from the Con and started a company called Chronology Arts with fellow composer Alex Pozniak who I met during the 2007 Modart workshop by The Song Company. My time at the Con was very significant, a full time 4 year degree in music composition had a high quality benchmark for intake, and then ongoing the university had to balance budget with KPIs and (somehow, magically) stay true to the art of andragogy of the “self” within the context of an “artform”. Although all the teachings have impacted on my perspective on art (not to mention the personal experiences I had during those years) outside of composition in particular I feel I’ve been directly influenced by my lessons with Daryl Pratt (in rhythm), Judy Bailey (in improvisation), Lewis Cornwell (in harmony and analysis). Within the composition department, there wasn’t one teacher who didn’t offer something incredible to me; Michael Smetanin, Anne Boyd, Matthew Hindson, Jessica Wells, Amanda Cole, Simone East, Ivan Zavada blew my mind in so many different ways that I’d have to release a book to summarise it. I wasn’t always the best student, and in retrospect I realise that my mental health was all over the shop, coping with being neuro divergent due to some difficult and sensitive aspects to my past. Nevertheless, we soldier on.

The Modart07 workshop was so formative on me that I also joined the Song Company administration under the general management of Antony Jeffery, who took me under his wing, somewhat, within arts administration, as much as Roland Peelman (the Song Company’s Artistic Director) became a friend - it brings me joy to remember the dinner parties we used to host when we lived together. Roland introduced me to many queer artists of various artforms, and Chronology kept growing and succeeding, commissioning many composers and curating many programs, winning many state and federal grants, getting festival gigs, being written up worldwide.

Things get a bit blurry here… the success I had in my music career as an artistic director and composer led to all sorts of opportunities, and I didn’t know how to regulate my workload well at all… so I had lots of great mentorships to help me with various aspects of leadership and directing; Lyle Chan, Carl Vine, Kim Walker, Caroline Sharpen and others for specific projects. I had a lot on; I was directing 3 festivals at once, teaching at 2 universities, even designing and delivering new courses/content, Hospital Hill released my first album which was funded by a private donor and supported by the state arts funding body ArtsNSW (before they rebranded to CreateNSW). I was being commissioned 4 to 6 times a year, working with ensembles like Plexus, The Song Company, Alicia Crossley, Moorambilla Choirs, Elsen Price, Jocelyn Ho. I had a collaborative partnership with Ben Hinchley, a creative technologist, as I began to get into electronics but spent more time producing than re-learning how to program. I was also doing workshops (Alondra De La Parra and the QSO gave me a mindblowing experience with an orchestral reading; rare things for a composer like me). I had a gorgeous stint in the Netherlands with Orchestre de Ereprijs, though I think I found that my sound, my approach to harmony, although very inspiring to the tutors at the camp, weren’t so inspiring to the performers who had to sonify them… a sign of things to come. Martijn Padding blew my mind at this workshop, as did a casual lunch-table-based improvisation with the other young composers attending. I’d explored phasing between pedestrianism and abstract art making with Alex Pozniak before, but this time I was at a whole table of fairly open and switched on composers, and, particularly with Holly Harrison, was able to create an impromptu text-based piece that just used a few techniques to make an ordinary conversation into something beautiful, absurd and hilarious.

I was at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne on a sales trip for Limelight Magazine (long story, ask me if you really want to know). However I got a call from a friend, who was also a casual mentor and indeed someone I truely looked up to (and still do) with admiration; Shane Simpson, who had been setting up the Prelude Foundation Composer Residencies across Australia. They had an empty mansion in Perth and after an internal curatorial discussion they’d decided on a shortlist and somehow I was offered the gig. I lived in Gallop House. I’d intended on writing a piano concerto for Roger Woodward called “Revocation”, revoking the promise to keep a secret, but I couldn’t. The secret I needed to express was too complicated and raw for me to express that way back then, and my music wasn’t really up to the task back then either. I had a creative crisis and a creative awakening at the same time. I took voice lessons with Sue Kingham, dance lessons at Strut Dance (in particular Gaga method was deeply inspiring; this was my first experience of dancing), became a very sought after life model for drawing groups (this became my main income), and started writing my own songs for me to perform. When my time was up, I landed another residency at the Mattie Furphy house, a writers residency near the nude beach in Swanbourne.

In Perth I attended professional level contemporary performance and physical theatre workshops which heavily influenced my art. Specifically Andrew Morrish’s workshop and Sarah Dowling’s workshop were incredible. I also befriended a lot of beautiful queer people whilst in Perth; my friendship with Charlie in particular, a local highschool teacher, opened my eyes to a different type of being within community. I also did a lot of contemporary beginners classes. During this time I had a gig in Sydney with the Sydney Art Quartet… both commissions/engagements with them had strong impacts on my creativity; one involved me being in the same news story about life modelling and art as Guy James Whitworth who contacted me and we formed a friendship quickly. He introduced me to director/choreographer Dean Walsh, who I later (about 2 or 3 weeks later) moved in with, and then with whom (about a couple of weeks after that) I adopted a greyhound (our fur-baby Liam).

Moving back to Sydney in 2017 was never intended, but love dictated my direction, and I started working with Dean in disability inclusive and queer focussed gigs, and self producing our own productions. I also started making my own solo shows/performances, usually within larger contexts. Some highlights include performing for Victoria Spence’s “Death and Dying” festival, Performance Space’s “Day for Night”, Serpentine Gallery’s “Masque”, PACT’s “Salon”, Guy James Whitworth’s Mardi Gras exhibition. Collaborative projects between Dean and I got consolidated into our company Weird Nest and we’ve created and presented a few large shows (mostly Dean solo on stage and me making music and producing) as well as worked to establish an inclusive adult performance group in Orange (regional NSW) as well as a group for young people living with disability in Bondi (metropolitan Sydney). During this time, I also joined the Anthropocene Transition Project, taught workshops in various cross disciplinary methods (mostly with Dean though sometimes my own), and somehow escaped the pressure of having to write dots to a deadline. I established a solo performance identity, and also cofounded a very queer band….

I collaborate as a composer on a lot of physical theatre and dance works with a growing list of credits.

I now perform on a plethora of instruments, voice, cello, percussion, keys, electronics in my own way, within my own means. I had to sell my oboe whilst I was at uni to pay rent (the choices one has to make), so I hope to buy one again when I can afford it (lol) so I can play the instrument I’m actually most accustomed to again, but for now I’m happy chugging along with what I have.

I’ve left quite a lot out of this bio. My life has been very full, and I’d have to (as I said) write a book to summarise the lot. However this collection of experiences will hopefully be sufficient to explain the answer to whatever question you sought to answer by reading this. I’m happy to answer more, just send me an email if you’re curious.

TIMELINE AND MILESTONES

These are moments (works, workshops, experiences) that really led me to think about my artistic practice the way I do now…

• Context is Everything - 2021

  A collaboration with Dean Walsh, a duo work. My performance role was off stage (on the mic), as well as supporting Dean through the manifestation of his ideas (so I did a lot of tech, and producing mainly). This was a development from the 2018 work “Remote Control”, performed over 2 nights for March Dance. The first night was insane because of heavy rain which drowned out the sound on stage, but we improvised quick adjustments to the score and stumbled through in an appropriate fashion. The second night we were able to be more on script, but we loved some of the improvisationary elements from the previous night so much we retained them.

• Infinite Item - 2020

  A collaboration with Dean Walsh (my role was composer, producer/manager), a 75 min performance that is a development from the 2018 “Threshold:NRC” project. It included a 30 min very slow opening section that develops into an extreme and chaotic expression of environmental destruction (both from a music perspective and staging/performance perspective). We did this work at Critical Path, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was enforcing social distancing rules.

• Adventurous Bodies (Infinite Item Soundtrack) - 2020

  I released the soundtrack to “Infinite Item”, a work by Dean Walsh I created the sound for.

• A REPEATED TEXT - 2019

  I was asked to make a 10 minute work with a deadline of 2 days for a variety night performance evening at PACT theatre in Erskineville. “A Repeated Text” has a voiceover that gives the audience instructions which aim to lead them to question barriers of etiquette and desire. About half of this work is my own sound design, the other half is a track by Moby and all of it was my choreography, with some directional help from Dean. This was my first solo performance work. 10’

• ADVENTUROUS BODIES - 2019

  To make my work more available to be auditioned by prospective collaborators in physical theatre and dance, I decided to release an album called Adventurous Bodies which features music written for such works. It’s a self-release and available on all major digital distribution platforms. It was a weird experience to put together because listening to work I’d written 6 or 7 years ago is really confronting - I’ve changed so much since then!

• REMOTE CONTROL - 2018

  A 2 hour ‘performed archive’ by Dean Walsh for the Brand X “Flying Nun” series. I wrote a lot of music and sound design for this gig, and designed/operated the tech for it. It’s an incredible journey into a 3 decade long career that traversed many significant moments in time, as well as shifts in pubic attitudes towards sexuality and masculinity.

• PROXIMA - 2018

  I was asked to make an experimental music work for this performance night, so I teamed up with Ben Hinchley again, but this time forming a new name to call ourselves; Flœk. We use the audiences’ phones as the PA system and our phones as control devises using datafeeds of live heartrate, movement, touch and proximity in a work about what it means to be ‘together’ and ‘apart’. This first rendition was 30 mins long, and very problematic. We’ve had further developments of it since, but this work was significant as it was a duo work that I’d co-devised using sound, technology and movement as intrinsic to the development and piece as a whole.

• THRESHOLD:NRC - 2018

  Dean was asked by PACT to make a work to sit in a double bill with Cloe Fournier. He made “Threshold:NRC”, for which I did a bit of sound design but a lot of stage management and studio assistant work. This piece was my first full experience of Dean’s abilities, and my first back-stage experience of a “professional level” full length performance art piece. It was hard yakka given the resources at hand, but he made a monumental work. It’s being developed again in 2019.

• VIGNETTES OF IDENTITY - 2017

  Immediately after Exile Nothing, I collaborated with visual artist Guy James Whitworth by sitting for him as a life model and making a performance work for his exhibition. I worked with Dean and Ben and James Beck (cellist from the AAQ/SAQ) to make a piece incorporating text (sung/spoken), costume elements, blocking/choreography, about different aspects of sexuality, gender and identity.

• EXILE NOTHING - 2017

  When I met Dean Walsh over skype in late 2017, we decided to start making work together… and began making “Exile Nothing”. Dean and I became romantic partners very quickly. He is a much more senior artist and is constantly ‘casually’ teaching me as we make work, hold workshops or simply creatively ‘play’ together. “Exile Nothing” is still in development, it’s a full length piece (60 mins) about child sex abuse, domestic violence and parental neglect, and is a duo between Dean and I. In it I sing a song I wrote whilst at Gallop House called “Meth Song”, and the soundscore is still being decided on entirely.

• AUSTRALIAN ART QUARTET (NOW KNOWN AS SYDNEY ART QUARTET) - 2016-2017

  The AAQ (or now, SAQ) premiered my string quartet work “27” whilst I posed as a nude life model for visual artist Wendy Sharpe to create murals of. My nude durational still performance (sure, let’s call it that) reflected on the music composition’s own premise; that of dissecting and revealing my deeper sense of self (albeit that the performance of it was 2 or 3 years after the composition of the music).

  The “27” performance was so successful that the AAQ invited me to their Bundanon development later that year to make a new work… so I made “30/31” with them - a co-devised piece using improv, movement, costume, staging and technology.

  These two experiences, the performance of “27” and the making of “30/31” really set me up for where I’ve found myself to be - combining my interests in performance art and sound/music composition.

• SARAH DOWLING’S AND ANDREW MORRISH’S WORKSHOPS AT STRUTT - 2016-2017

  These workshops were a major influence that deepened my interest in the “theatre” side of “physical theatre”. In both I experimented with areas of expression I didn’t know I had available to me.

• BODIES IN MOTION - 2016

  A work of dance and electronic (fixed media) music, this was the first piece I wrote music to that I also performed dance to. It was part of Strut’s “advanced contemporary” class showing. There were about 12 dancers following a scored improv to my music, myself included. 5’24

• GALLOP HOUSE - 2016

  I was the inaugural composer in residence at Gallop House (Prelude Foundation, Bundanon Trust), Perth. This residency was for 6 months, which was followed by a short 2 months residency at the Mattie Furphy writer’s cottage in Perth. During this time I took the plunge to pursue my interest in performing, and took up singing lessons and dance lessons. The dance lessons at Strut really shook me through my core, and I found myself falling in love with movement. I would, from then on, begin to transform my practise to incorporate movement and improvisation.

• RELENTLESS CITY - 2016

  Plexus Trio commissioned a work by me for their event at the Metropolis Festival in Melbourne that had to be about “cities”. So I composed a work that used live data feeds of the weather and of the performer’s heart rates to make a work that would be bespoke to each city it is ever performed in. The data triggers responsive poetry and various aspects of soundscape. 10’

• CATHARSIS - 2015

  Building on my collaboration with Ben, when I was commissioned by the Australian Piano Quintet, I immediately composed a piece with multiple dynamic tempi that referred to the performers’ live heart rate as that tempo. The work itself was me nutting out some frustration or anger about something (I can’t remember what) so the heart, its chakra, neural-physiological connections, is what this piece is all about. 15’

• YOUR WARPED DISTANT CALL - 2015

  I was approached by double bassist Elsen Price for a new work, so I made him a monster. This 24 minute electroacoustic duet for double bass and mandolin established my creative partnership with Benjamin Hinchley - I wanted to do a whole bunch of electronic effects and for me to operate it remotely during the concert, and Ben helped me with the software. 24’

• GIVE ME THE NIGHT - 2014

  This piece made me feel like “a real composer” for the first time… mainly because of the cultural cringe in Australia, many of us feel/felt that we need overseas recognition to be a ‘real’ anything. So when I was accepted into the Ochest de Ereprijs young composer workshop, I was over the moon. I loved writing this work, and was inspired by the facilitators, but my style didn’t appeal to the ensemble as a whole so the romance was short lived. 4’.

• SKY EARTH BIRD - 2014

  My first work for a much larger choir, and made up by kids. This was a significant work for me because I got to practise devised composition methods with the kids - stuff I’d always wanted to try out but never really got many chances to do. I still use the working methods that I’d developed during this composition. 9’

• SONG OF THE VIRTUES - 2013

  A huge commission by the Song Company, easy brief; “Write the music that the angels sing to keep the universe intact”…. …. so I teamed up with Chris Mansell for words again and Roland Peelman (the conductor) grilled me more than I’d been grilled to date on my technique, but it was really worth it. This work toured with their Christmas season that year. 8’

• MORPHIC - 2013

  My first major work for dance was for Sarah-Vyne Vassallo’s “Morphic” coproduced between Chronology Arts and Dirty Feet. Almost entirely electroacoustic but using a lot of samples of my own acoustic music, the full score’s about 30 mins. It was performed at the Seymour Centre.

• 27, 28, 29, 30/31 - 2012-2018

  This is a series of string quartet works I wanted to be about coming of creative maturity. What I discovered is that instead they became a musical interpretation of the turmoil or elation I was experiencing during the age the title reflects… AND a reflection of the development of my technique… which these four works definitely do. 27 I wrote during my masters, and it’s very conventional… I won’t give you an analysis of each, but it ends with 30/31 where I integrated movement, staging and technology into the composition.

• SEVEN STATIONS - 2012

  Commissioned by Charles Davidson, with help from ArtsNSW (Create) and quite a few favours, I collaborated with poet Chris Mansell to write a song cycle centred around various train stations in Sydney. The song cycle was recorded and released by Hospital Hill records.

• “E” - 2011

  Alicia Crossley and I have shared a long friendship, which really began when she commissioned this work from me in 2008. One of the first “professional” works I’d written for acoustic instrument with fixed media electronics. 4’30.

• INSPIRATIONAL GIFT - 2009

  A commission by Penny and Greg, I started musical portraiture with this piece… I got to know Penny well over a year and wrote a piece about her. A mixed 5 piece ensemble, flute, clarinet, viola, saxophone, cello. 17’30.

• QUINTESSENCE - 2008

  This was a Chronology Arts project. We had 5 quintets of 5 different instrumental families and presented 5 new works for them. I (delightfully) ended up with the string quintet. Quintessence featured an approach to writing I’d been working on in another significant work (Inspirational Gift) - music portraiture. I wrote about 5 very significant people to my life at the time; my partner Rudson, Charles Davidson who’d supported Chronology’s genesis, my friend and guide Roland, my best friend in the whole world (who I could never see) Laura and a man I loved and worked with very closely, Alex. 20’50.

• CHRONOLOGY ARTS - 2007-2014

  I established Chronology Arts with Alex Pozniak, who I met during MODART. Together we made so many concerts and commissioned so many works that I cannot remember them all… it’s all a blur now. We had 6-8 events a year with 4-10 commissions for each event over a 7 year period. We played our own works but mostly works by other emerging composers. We had a residency at the Seymour Centre for a number of years, and collaborated with DirtyFeet on a dance/music collaboration.

• LES MOTS - 2007

  The first Chronology Arts concert was in November 2007. Straight after MODART, Alex and I decided to put a massive concert on with only 10 weeks notice - ‘easy mate’…. we did an open call out and just selected compositions in whatever instrumentation…. 15 works and 25 performers later, I’d learnt a few things about producing!!! For the occasion, I wrote “Les Mots”, which as a love song for my then-partner, Rudson. It was later re-interpreted by Roland Peelman and Jessica Aszodi, but I am still enamoured by the baritone sax writing in the first version, though Jess’s version has a really cool woodblock rhythm…. 8’

• <<CLICK YOUR USERNAME.>> - 2007

  “To begin, click your username”. Whilst I was beginning to produce concerts and music in France I discovered I was accepted into the MODART program by the Song Company. I wrote <<click your username.>> about gay online dating… the song was a “hit” I thought as it was broadcast here in Australia as well as in New Zealand.

• ENFER EN PARADIS - 2007

  Straight out of uni I went traveling and lived in Cannes (France) where I created "Enfer en Paradis” a string quartet work for a concert I put together with local musicians the the “herberge de jeunesse”…. it’s like a long-term youth hostel. It’s a piece that juxtaposed the ‘red carpet’ sect and the relatively poorer (working middle class, recent immigrants, etc) on the other side of the main road in Cannes.

• A FEW REALLY IMPORTANT CLASSES DURING UNDERGRAD - 2003-2006

  Michael Smetanin. Ivan Zavada. Judy Bailey. Matthew Hindson. Anne Boyde. Mary Finisterer. Peter Blamey. Amanda Cole. Jessica Wells. Simone East. Richard Toop. … and to my colleagues who let their innuendo run wild with me as we started SECS (the Sydney Eclectic Composers Society). Marshall McGuire, Roland Peelman. These amazing people, teachers and artists gave me unforgettable lessons. Of course, there were others who gave me the subtle grounding needed for the composition I’m now capable of; Daryl Pratt, Jason Noble, Lewis Cornwell, David Larkin…. I wanted to list 3 or 4 ‘big important lessons’ but the more I thought about it the more I realised how impossible that would be…. all these lessons were important, if not then then certainly they are (to me) now.

• GETTING ACCEPTED IN TO THE SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM’S BACHELOR OF MUSIC (COMPOSITION) - 2003

  I’d never really felt that the other students at school could really understand me - a few did, but most didn’t. When I got to the Con I found Everyone was really enthusiastic about what I loved - music being a major part of that. By the end of the degree though it was obvious that although we may have gone in with similar passions, we all left on our own terms and very individualistically.

• GABRIEL’S OBOE ON MUM’S STEREO - 1992

  I was 8 years old. When I heard the oboe solo for the first time, I got spine tingles. I was enraptured by the music. Written by Ennio Morricone, this work (from a film called “The Mission”) has caused many people to take up the oboe - it’s beautiful. This moment inspired me to make experiences that gave the same feeling of rapture to others. I was fortunate to have a great composer and a beautiful empath as music teachers in high school, and encouraging parents.

• BORN - 1984