The World New Music Days held in Australia
Australia hosted the World New Music Days Festival which was held in Sydney and neighbouring towns from April 30th to May 9th. The next World New Music Days, as you know, will be held in Zagreb, April 10-15, 2011, within the Music Biennale Zagreb (April 7-17, 2011). This festival has been held since 1922, and is always hosted by a different state or city. This was the first time that the World New Music Days Festival was held in Australia.
The organization which presents this Festival is the International Society for Contemporary music (ISCM), which consists of 57 national or regional sections. The Australian hosts were the Australian Music Centre and the Aurora Festival, with the media partner ABC Classic FM, which recorded or broadcasted live performance of some of the concerts. The artistic director of the World New Music Days Festival was the Australian composer and a distinguished cultural worker Matthew Hindson.
The delegate from the Croatian section and a representative of the Festival's next host - Antun Tomislav Šaban, secretary general of the Croatian Composers' Society - participated in production of the World New Music Days Festival and the ISCM's conference, which is held alongside the Festival. Mr. Šaban actively participated in the ISCM's conference, where he reported on the preparations for the next Festival and presented its program.
For this year's World New Music Days Festival the sections from all over the world submitted several hundred scores for various ensembles, out of which the international panel selected around one hundred that were performed at a total of 24 concerts. Out of works by Croatian composers the panel selected a piano work Studio 1 by a young pianist and composer Bruno Vlahek, and the composition Etude 125 for jazz orchestra, by Antun Tomislav Šaban. Vlahek's composition was premiered on May 4 at the hall of the Australian ABC radio, while Šaban's was premiered on May 5 at the Grand Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
In the photo: The Sydney Conservatorium