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Composer and improviser living and working on unceded Gadigal – Eora land (Sydney, Australia)

Josephine’s practice centers the concept of ‘interference’ as both a vibrant compositional tool and an aesthetic framework for articulating her practice. This materialises in her work through mediations of disclosure and secrecy, disturbances unfolding within and across modes of sound production, feedback loops, subversions of agency hierarchies and an unyielding preoccupation with the uncanny.


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

Recent & Upcoming Work


Vessel Song
2022-23

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.


The Tent
2020

Premiered by Sydney Chamber Opera
April 24 2020
Carriageworks, NSW Australia

chamber opera for soprano, tenor, baritone, ensemble and electronics 

stream full concert here
view a score sample here


New Work for Ensemble Offspring

NEW WORK (title tbc)
2023

for chamber ensemble  

[upcoming]
premiering at Carriageworks, NSW
June 23 2023 

Presented by Ensemble Offspring


More to come on the development of this work, including sketches, string maps and possibly even a few guides on how to make string scores and collide weaving/threading with notation.


Still -or-
Invitation at Dusk
2019

for alto flute, voice and electronics

Premiered by Claire Chase and Levy Lorenzo
 
National Sawdust, NYC United States
September 29 2019 


listen here
view the full score here


New Work
2023

for alto flute & double bass

for performance by Will Hansen & Josephine Macken
late 2023
Sydney, Australia