Projects
Eight Guitars
An album of eight songs written over a long period of time – some from film and television – others composed during periods between screen projects.
Each song features a different guest guitarist drawn from a pool of regular collaborators and friends curated for their unique style and sound.
Featuring Kirin J Callinan, Daniel Champagne, Brendan Gallagher, Damien Lane, Shane O’Mara, Bruce Reid and Danny Widdicombe. Produced by Tony Buchen – who describes the album as ‘Cosmic Americana’ – Eight Guitars was performed with full band and guest guitarists at City Recital Hall in 2023.
With thanks to Create NSW and Rise funding.
Photo credit Jess Gleeson
Encounter
You’re in a place where the eels lay down and the cars light up. Where the Maccas sign is the biggest moon in the sky. It’s Parramatta. Summertime. Early evening. ENCOUNTER is your invitation to the neighbourhood.
This joyful, site-specific work of music and dance, set in the parklands of Parramatta’s Prince Alfred Square, is an exploration of the everyday extraordinariness and power of young people living in Western Sydney and regional Australia.
Directed by Emma Saunders and developed with a cast of 16 dancers from FORM Dance Projects and Fling Physical Theatre and The WSYO, in collaboration with composers Amanda Brown and Jodi Phillis, writer Felicity Castagna, conductor James Pensini, and associate artist Rob McCredie.
Commissioned by Sydney Festival and Bermagui Four Winds Festival 2020 with additional performances by the We Are Here Company at Sydney Opera House UnWrapped 2022.
Seven Stories
They say when we boil down the world’s vast cauldron of myths, legends and literature, seven archetypal stories emerge; they are the bones of our human experience. But what would they sound like as music?
Seven genre-defying composers from across the Australian artistic landscape weave together a musical re-imagining from a female perspective. Featuring new music composed by Amanda Brown, Jodi Phillis and Bree Van Reyk; screen composers Kyls Burtland and Caitlin Yeo; and the classical world’s Sally Whitwell and Jane Sheldon, with accompanying visuals designed by Sarah-Jane Woulahan and text by Hilary Bell.
Seven Stories – performed by Ensemble Offspring at City Recital Hall for VIVID Festival 2017.
Incognita
“This is my country! This is my country?”
Incognita – a site-based, large scale outdoor dance theatre work – is Stalker Theatre Company’s exploration of Australia’s uneasy relationship with it’s own past, present and future.
‘How can we non-Indigenous Australians justify our continuous presence and our love for this country while the Indigenous people remain dispossessed and their history unacknowledged?’ (historian Peter Read).
Directed by Rachael Swain and choreographed by Koen Augustijnen with original music composed by Amanda Brown, Incognita was commissioned by Sydney Festival and performed over several evenings in the Botanic Gardens, Sydney and later at Perth and Melbourne Arts Festivals 2003-2004.