The Australian Music Centre has announced the six Australian works submitted to the International Society for Contemporary Music’s 2023 World New Music Days festival.

Ben Carey, Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, Meta Cohen, Angus Davison, Dominic Flynn and Cat Hope. Images courtesy of the Australian Music Centre.

Six works have been submitted across six categories representing the rich variety of the  contemporary Australian musical sphere for this year’s festival, taking place in South Africa, 24 Nov–3 December.

Selected for the Medium Chamber Ensemble category, Angus Davison’s Nigel is a work for string trio, clarinet and piano and was commissioned by Omega Ensemble for its 2021 CoLAB: Composer Accelerator program, where Davison was a participant. It explores the real story of the sole remaining gannet (named Nigel) inhabiting New Zealand’s remote Mana Island, which was populated with concrete decoy birds by conservationists in an ultimately-unsuccessful effort to reintroduce the species. Nigel chose one of these decoys as his mate and, after building a nest for the two of...