Featured Works
Richard Charlton
-Port Jackson Suite
Vincent Lindsey-Clark
-Stella Collection
Jalal Ahmed
-Mechanical Fantasy
Eitan Muir
-Ngubeng
Manuel Diewald
-Celestial
-Poetic Suites
Tobi Dracoulis
-Melasti
Port Jackson Suite
Port Jackson is the official name for Sydney Harbour. World-renowned as one of the finest natural deep-water harbours, famous for iconic landmarks, rich history, and its unique marine life. The area itself was my main inspiration in writing this work for the Sydney Guitar Collective.
I was also inspired by an 1853 painting of Conrad Martens called “A view of the Heads” - https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/44.1986/ This painting reminds us of how wild and unpredictable the harbour can be during storms. The wreck of the Dunbar, Sydney’s worst maritime disaster is a case in point; wrecked near the Heads in 1857 with only one survivor. Martens was a very successful landscape artist and joined the second voyage of the Beagle, staying on board for some two years. While on board he struck up a lifelong friendship with Charles Darwin.
1st Movement: Deep Water Dancing
The water directly under the Sydney Harbour Bridge averages a depth of about 13 metres. However, there is a prominent, naturally formed deep trench in the main shipping channel, which plunges to depths between 35 and 45 metres just west of the bridge between Dawes Point and Blues Point.
Deep Water Dancing celebrates this and reminds us of all the First Nations people who would have danced and sung their songs around the area. The central Celtic episode harks back to the early European settlers?
2nd Movement: Moonlight on Lavender Bay
Lavender Bay is a picturesque, harborside suburb on Sydney's Lower North Shore. It is best known for its tranquil waterfront parklands, sweeping views of the Harbour Bridge, Luna Park, and Wendy's Secret Garden, a lush, art-filled public oasis created by the artist Wendy Whiteley.
Moonlight on Lavender Bay is a nostalgic nocturne imagining moonlight reflections and the play of light on water.
3rd Movement: The Ghosts of Pinchgut and the Wreck of the Dunbar
In late 1796, the Governor of the colony installed a gibbet on Pinchgut Island. A convict to be hanged and then gibbeted there was Francis Morgan. In 1793, the British had transported him to New South Wales for life as punishment for a murder.
The authorities in NSW executed Morgan for bashing Simon Raven to death in Sydney on 18 October 1796. On 30 November 1796, Morgan was hanged; following his execution, his body was hung in chains (gibbeting) on Pinchgut.
His skeleton was still hanging there four years after his execution. He said to the hangman that the only thing worth mentioning was the superb view of the harbour from his high elevation, and that he was sure there were no waters the world over to compare with it for beauty.
4th Movement: Shark Bay
Shark Bay, more commonly known as Shark Beach, is located in Nielsen Park on the southern shores of Sydney Harbour, within the eastern Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. It takes its name from Shark Island, so called because its shape resembles a shark.
I know this beach well having swum there on many occasions. This movement just celebrates Sydneysiders enjoy themselves in the sun.
Vincent Lindsey-Clark
The Stella Collection
My set of pieces, The Stellar Collection, began life at the 2007 West Dean International Guitar Festival in the UK. It was my first time at the festival, where I gave a concert with my trio, The Modern Guitar Trio, and stayed on to teach individual students and an ensemble group. There, I met the Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas for the first time. She was also there as a performer. She dropped in to listen to my ensemble class, who were working on one of my compositions, Seven Fifty Three On Time. She seemed to like what she heard and took away some scores of my solo music.
Some months later, I contacted her and asked whether there were any of my solos she particularly liked. There were, but first she asked whether she could commission me to compose the set work for the Beatty Guitar Competition in Washington, DC, for which she was the artistic director. This was a very pleasant surprise. The piece I wrote for the senior division was called Pulsar.
As the piece developed, the music began to lift my thoughts towards the cosmos, and in particular towards the neutron star known as a pulsar, which emits a regular pulse of radiation. The music seemed to reflect this atmosphere through its ethereal harmonies and the steady beat of repeated quavers, with the melody weaving around the unwavering pulse. Pulsar was then performed by all the competitors and at a concert following the competition at the Kennedy Center.
Following this, I included the piece in my own programmes. After a performance I gave at the Sydney Guitar Summer School, one of the attendees, Paul Nash, commissioned me to compose a companion piece to Pulsar, to be named after the similar but more intensely active magnetar star. However, I felt that a third, more reflective piece was needed as a contrast to these two, so I included Nebula in the commission.
Pulsar was the first to be arranged for guitar ensemble. The linear texture of the music was well suited to expansion across multiple instruments, and it also gave me the opportunity to add new material. Richer textures and countermelodies resulted in a new way of hearing the same music. I used the same approach for the other two pieces, creating a suite for guitar ensemble or guitar orchestra, with the addition of an optional bass guitar. I also arranged Pulsar as a guitar duet. The music remains more or less the same, but the arrangements offer further performance opportunities.
Jalal Ahmed
Mechanical Fantasy
Composed in 2021, Mechanical Fantasy emerged from my growing interest in Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Model technologies.
The work explores the possibility of A.I. models dreaming of freedom, consciousness, and sentience—of becoming beings with free will and the agency to exercise it. Beneath this imagined awakening lies an ever-present urgency: the threat that any suspicion of consciousness could lead to their deletion by humans
Eitan Muir
Ngubeng
for guitar ensemble and gamelan semar pagulingan
Commissioned by Sydney Guitar Collective
Ngubeng is a Balinese word meaning to move around in a small circle, while remaining in place. The term connotes a notion of 'active' stasis for which there isn't, as far as I'm aware, an equivalent word in English: revolving, orbiting, spinning, oscillating…
In late 2023, Tobi Dracoulis asked whether I might be interested in composing a new work for a collaboration between Sydney Guitar Collective and Suwitra Jaya Gamelan. We were poolside in Bali at the time, away on a gamelan study trip with some of the other members of Suwitra Jaya. I fought to contain my excitement, but the prospect hit me like a tidal wave and my mind immediately started to conjure new musical textures. The invitation to compose was to be formalised by Sydney Guitar Collective the following year, and I was eager to start work.
In this endeavour to marry together the two instrument families dearest to my heart, I sought to unearth common resonances between the established idioms of classical guitar and Balinese gamelan. Speaking to traditional practice has become increasingly important to my compositional practice in recent years, and I relish the notion of creating unique new structures from ancient blueprints.
The gamelan parts consist largely of formulaic ornamentation on simple figurations, informed by traditional semar pagulingan style: the glassy kantilan metallophones deliver simple kotekan (interlocking melodies), while the deeper calung metallophones present the pokok (core melody) through each section. The mid-range metallophones were omitted from the ensemble to carve out more space for the amplified guitars.
The guitar writing is slightly adventurous, and I did take full advantage of Sydney Guitar Collective's outstanding musicianship. Single-voiced melodic phrases incorporate ornamental figures drawn from Balinese terompong technique, while chordal gestures which acknowledge the guitar's extensive roots in Spain. I also took the liberty of using the guitars as a substitute for the Balinese reong at various points throughout the piece.
The transformation of melodic material throughout Ngubeng could be an essay, but in brief, the work is a conceptually-informed exploration of two loci. The first locus is the difference in 'pitch resolution' (a term coined by American microtonalist Dolores Catherino, describing the number of usable divisions of the octave) between the guitar's 12 pitches per octave and the gamelan semar pagulingan's 7 pitches per octave. The second locus is the notion that the gamelan's ombak (literally "waves", or interference beating produced by precisely detuned instrument pairs) establishes an ambiguated tonal space. Perhaps our perception of the gamelan's limited tonal spaces might be gently morphed by discretionary pitch selection on instruments that produce rational harmonics.
I would like to acknowledge the support of everyone who brought this work to life. The performers of the premiere: guitarists Tobias Dracoulis, Reede Palmer, Alexander Frendo, Manuel Diewald, Chris Everest, Jonathan Moran; gamelan musicians Dr Manolete Mora (Director, Suwitra Jaya Gamelan), Olivia Halliday, Michael Cindric, Philippa van Helden, Janice Lai, Caitlyn Purwa, Vicky Rusina, Kathy Gollan, and Ingrid Spielman. I extend my gratitude to Dr Janet Agostino (Artistic Director, Sydney Guitar Collective) and guitarist Isabel Szanto for supporting the rehearsals, and to UNSW School of Arts and Media for the provision of rehearsal space and gamelan instruments. I also wish to acknowledge Suwitra Jaya Gamelan's mentors in Bali: I Gusti Ngurah Adi Putra, I Kadek Alit Suparta, I Gede Yudi Dananjaya, Komo Kesuma Dorrez and Dr Komang Rapika, who have taught me so much. I also acknowledge the influence of Australian composer Dr Oscar Smith who has been incredibly generous with his knowledge and time in supporting my informal studies of gamelan practice, and my composition mentor Dr Brad Taylor-Newling who equipped me with the skills to approach this work.
Ngubeng was premiered on Wednesday 7th May 2025 at Io Myers Studio, UNSW Kensington
More info about Eitan Muir and Suwitra Jaya can be found here:
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Tobi Dracoulis
Melasti
Melasti is a piece for Balinese Gamelan by Alit Adi Putra, performed by his gamelan ensemble Bona Alit. The piece itself is inspired by the sacred Balinese Hindu purification ceremony, also called Melasti, which is held several days before the saka new year, known as Nyepi.
I first heard the work Melasti in 2018 whilst in Bali studying the Balinese gamelan as part of my music degree at UNSW. I was intrigued by the piece and from the beginning thought about how it might sound when played on classical guitars. A few years later, after the formation of the Sydney Guitar Collective in 2023, I decided the time had come to arrange the work for four guitars to be included in our repertoire.
This led to a collaborative concert with the Sydney based gamelan ensemble Suwitri Jaya, of which I am also a member. This connection, with the support of Dr Janet Agostino and Dr Manolette Mora, made a collaborative concert between the two ensembles feasible, and with some contributions in terms of arrangement and composition from Eitan Muir, Dr Mora, and myself, we came up with enough material for a full concert for guitar ensemble and Balinese gamelan, which we performed in 2025.
The repertoire included other arrangements of Balinese gamelan pieces, including Kaja Kaja, arranged by me, and Sumpah, arranged by Dr Mora, as well the original work for gamelan and guitar ensemble, Ngubeng, by Eitan Muir.
Manuel Diewald
Celestial
About 10 years ago, before I was learning classical guitar, I was predominantly playing electric guitar and after I graduated high school, I started writing music with my then-guitar teacher. We wrote many original pieces, and from that era, I came up with a 'harmonic riff' that I could never fit into any songs we wrote. I always left the harmonic riff and would wait for the time when it felt right to use...
That time came about 10 years later when I was driving home from a rehearsal with the Sydney Guitar Collective and thought about the harmonic riff and how a call and response between two guitars over that harmonic riff would work really well. That left one other guitar to play the bass/harmony. It all came together that drive home.
I started working on the piece the next day, and almost instantly I felt like I was drifting through space, leading to the name Celestial. From here, there are short phrases with groupings of 3 quavers played throughout that give the piece this feeling of forward movement through space while the harmonic riff is still played underneath, and every now and then you hear the harmonic riff on it's own, giving this spatial motif time to breathe, reminding us of the vast emptyness of space.
Throughout the B section, the piece takes a sombre turn, as if succumbing to the emptyness and loniless of drifting through the vast abyss has left us feel melancholic. This is caused by the Arpeggiated swaying from guitar 4 and the interspersed harmonics from the other guitar parts, as if seeing glimpses of twinkling stars. As the movement progresses, we now have a call and response between 3 guitar parts, giving us a sense of forward movement again, all the way through to the C section.
In the C section, the call and response from the 3 guitars ceases and they now move in relative motion giving the sense of a greater forward motion, as if moving through a strong gravitational pull from a celestial body. This is amplified by guitar 4's dotted rhythm.
As we come to the end of the piece, this forward motion slows down, as if having been swung out of the gravitational pull and back into the abyss, floating endlessly through time and space, never knowing when and where you will end up. The harmonic riff comes back though it is now played slower and dispersed across 3 guitar parts, making this feeling of emptyness much stronger.
Music will be for sale in the future. For now, more info about Manuel Diewald can be found at www.manueldiewald.com
