Josephine Macken is a composer and improviser living and working on unceded Gadigal – Eora land (Sydney, Australia).

The concept of interference is central to her work, wielded both as a tool for artmaking and an aesthetic framework for articulating her practice. Josephine’s music maps disturbances across modes of sound production, through feedback loops, agency hierarchies and meditations on the uncanny. She completed her Masters through the Sydney Conservatorium’s awarding-winning Composing Women Program and has presented her work at the Shanghai Conservatory, Damstädter Ferienkurse, Harvard and Columbia University.

Josephine has been awarded fellowship at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, beginning her residency in mid-2024.

View full bio here

View a list of works here

Further reading/listening
available here

Thesis: An Aesthetics of Interference in my Composition Practice
MMus (composition) – Doctor of philosophy
Awarded by The University of Sydney, 2021
Read here

Contact at josephinemacken.composer@gmail.com

Score Samples

Still -or- Invitation at Dusk (2019-20)
for soloist; alto flute, alto voice & electronics

Burial (2019)
for mixed quartet;
c trumpet, clarinets, percussion & double bass

UPCOMING PROJECTS

UNSETTLED HOLD
2023

for soprano and ‘cello

Composed for Jane Sheldon and James Morley

Premiering at the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
NSW, Australia
Aug 6, 2023

PURCHASE TICKETS

RECENT WORKS

ARACHNE
2023

-or- the imaginary line about which the body rotates

for chamber ensemble

Premiered by Ensemble Offspring
Staging by Michelle St Anne
Carriageworks, NSW, Australia
June 23, 2023

Vessel Song
2022

for three players;
lines, vessels and membranophone

Premiered by SPEAK Percussion

Melbourne Recital Centre, VIC Australia
Feb 9 2023

Vessel Song explores the temporality of lines, engaging tangible lengths of rope, twine, fabric, chains and objects as both measurements and proponents of musical time. The vessels themselves, cylindrical pillars through which these lines encounter resistance and amplification, highlight the uncanny ways empty spaces are made to speak.