In March of 2020, during the first COVID lockdown, I was fortunate to be able to leave my apartment in Sydney and stay with family in Canberra. Temporarily moving back to my childhood home, with all events cancelled, I suddenly had lots of something that had been missing from the last few years of my life – free time.

Composer Chloe SinclairChloe Sinclair. Photo © Julia Faragher

Usually when I start a composition, it is for a particular purpose, such as writing for a specific ensemble or upcoming event. Being back in my parents’ house, I started to compose for the sake of just being creative. I was improvising on the piano when the first melodic ideas that would later become Rainfall of Diamonds began to form.

Later in the year, Leonard Weiss approached me with the idea of commissioning a world premiere to open the Canberra Sinfonia’s 2021 program. Already on the program was Copland’s Appalachian Spring, the original complete ballet score for 13 instruments. Apart from the framework of composing for the same set of instruments, Leonard outlined ideas of ‘movement and stillness’ as inspiration. When I thought about these ideas, the...