Tuesday 10 November, 2026
Future Classics, our Hatched Academy Composer showcase, is coming up on Saturday 21 November at the Sydney Opera House. Our four outstanding composers have been working hard all year to create new and exciting works for this concert, led by mentor Jack Symonds as well as their international composer mentors.
Here’s a sneak peak into the works you’ll get to hear at Future Classics.
Hao Zhen — What Springs, Off
What Springs, Off began with the name Ensemble Offspring. I was drawn to “offspring,” which suggests something coming into being, and to springs as mechanisms that store and release energy, setting things in motion. This made me wonder how a small vibration might set a larger resonant body in motion.
In the piece, I bring tiny mechanical objects into contact with instruments. At first, I heard the wind-up toys and Nanobugs as impersonal, almost expressionless sounds. They vibrate insistently, at a steady pace that seems indifferent to the music around them. Their narrow timbres and mechanical timing challenged me: how could these sounds coexist with the instruments’ changing musical time without being absorbed into it?
As I worked, I began to hear the machines differently. Their vibrations became less like interruptions and more like breaths; their small, enclosed sounds opened into a wider field of resonance through contact with other surfaces and the instruments. I’m looking forward to hearing what the ensemble makes of that encounter.
Moses Mohammed — Gumnut
I’ve been having a lot of fun digging into an old childhood fascination of mine through this project. It feels like I’ve indulged an intrusive thought and am now following it all the way through. The combination of instruments we’re working with is quite an obscure and fun challenge; there’s a lot to consider around balance, density, space, and register, and the unique sound palette is leading me towards the most playful and unexpected choices. There’s a natural theme of sorts around ‘breath’ with the three wind players, which I’ve expanded into four with the addition of another instrument.
This composition is a celebration of something I find extremely beautiful, and making it has been a cherished opportunity to finally engage with it deeply and purposefully.
Audrey Ormella — Gull Stretched
My piece for Hatched Academy explores different forms of memory.
Aural memory, in the form of bird calls from my travels, pulled and stretched beyond recognition. Artistic memory, in the mirror surface of a sculpture which reflects the world back outward. And physical memory; I held an object forgotten by time, and felt the history contained within.
These forms of memory manifest in angular musical shapes that immediately bounce back on themselves, and melodic ideas that disintegrate into textural impressions. The piece begins with wind recalling the shape of a gull’s cry, the bird emerging slowly from whispering percussion and winds. Later, energetic driving figures disappear as quickly as they emerge, their sonic afterimage colouring the silence as an echo of the past.
The process for this piece has involved sifting through photos and field recordings of my travels, slowing the recordings to understand their minute elements, and sketching sculptures that inspired me, to explore their shapes. This process informed the harmonic language and the contours of gestures, giving the piece a unique colour and identity that I am excited to explore with the Ensemble Offspring musicians in November!
Jude Donahue by Keith Saunders
Jude Donahue — Bombastia
Venturing into worlds of interlocking, jagged lyricism, dense, luxurious and frequently grotesque harmonies, and flighty, extravagant dance, Bombastia explores the distortion and dramatization of musical material through satire, fluidity, and extremes. I often create gestures that fracture into distinct rhythmically active strands, a repetition of unison material might become blurred and frenzied. I sought to play heavily with momentum, the opening is all about downwards motion, whether in sluggish descent or in rapid plunges. Later, the jazzy, trumpet solo fights against its own swagger, attempting to burst from its containment, though ultimately failing. The dance is fraught and overloaded with so much momentum, it manipulates the rhythm, resulting in augmented, schmaltzy bubbles. I aimed to create constant action, whether violent or playful, and keep the listener guessing in all the stutters, swells, and abrupt stabs.
