Wellington Composer, Rhian Sheehan

Straight up, this is a little ridiculous.

 (Their family is nuts...seriously though they're all musically on crack.)

Here's some music for ya'll to study to. Get those Curate and Critique's done!

In first year at Elam I took NZ Music as a General Ed and it was a BRILLIANT paper.

Our musical history from rock n roll to pop, through to our contemporary composers-just to name a few- is really interesting!

Tracks like Nusquam (the second from the top), are a massive influence on my making. As a musician listening to instrumental music, with a narrative within the composition of the instruments is an incredible learning experience. As a theatre geek and film fanatic, music is the addition of another dimension. As an art maker, it's an inspiration source and a place where emotion is evoked from the subconscious. I enjoy the narrative within these pieces and the use of different instruments to create bodies.

Performance is something I have heavily studied this year and with that came the notion of using voice as a medium. I haven't worked it out fully but it's always been something in the back of my mind and I continue to read about performance, about music within performance, about voice and body within a contemporary art context.
At talk week, as I ended the performance with an acapella piece called 'Cheerleader' by the artist St. Vincent (Annie Clark), people from the other side of the studio and even outside came over to my performance space. I was so interested in this. How the voice carries and calls. What does it evoke in people that they gravitate towards a voice. Is it nostalgia? Is it curiosity?
Does the voice, a singing voice, have a sort of power, for lack of a better word.

I became interested in protest songs; the songs of men and women across the Middle East, which this year has been filled with protest and riot. Our own little courntry too, whose University protests I attended. Both very different but the use of voice, as a collective this time, is key.

Sheehan's music however uses little to no voice, but he's an incredible composer. The instruments sing for themselves.