Vanessa is a percussionist-composer with a long history in experimental music. She makes bold sonic events that propose new futures for 21st century music whether on a rockface, in the bush, building an inhabitable acoustic guitar, or following flooded river systems. Central to all her work is listening - opening our ears to paying attention to the world around us as we consider space and place, the human and the more-than-human. Driven by the unknown, her speculative text-based compositions, object-based re-purposing, and deep sonic gatherings stimulate our imagination as we listen in a climate-transforming world.

 

Vanessa builds compositions, creates contexts for improvisation, and collaborates across art-forms and disciplines. Her work orbits around broadly around extended approaches, site-specific investigations, minimalist reductions and a visceral sense of embodied play. She has toured the world for 30 years, premiering hundreds of works, musicking with scores of improvisers, presenting work at major international festivals, and sharing her knowledge as a teacher, mentor, university lecturer and arts advocate.

 

Recent work includes collaborating with Annea Lockwood (Volume AGNSW/ OHM Festival Brisbane), The Journey Down (Tura), and a focussed investigation of her work through Liquid Architecture (Melbourne). Other notable works include The Imaginary Aviary (speculative ornothology); Channelling Dulcie’s Piano (How the River taught the piano to sing);  Curating and Directing the annual Easter at the Piano Mill; The Immersive Guitar (with Karin Schaupp); Beacons, (trio for acoustic instruments, electronics and ocean co-composed by Lawrence English); The Space Inside (solo for tamtam on Room40 label); The Listening Museum (exploring sonic possibilities in the working factory of UAP) and ongoing work with the multi-award winning labatory that is Clocked Out (with Erik Griswold).  

 

Vanessa demonstrates leadership as a Music Curator and Artistic Director including Festival Director of Tyalgum Festival (2017-2020), Easter@Harrigans Lane (2015-24), the Australian Percussion Gathering (2010/2016), Transplanted Roots International Percussion Symposium (2017), 100 Ways to Listen at World Science Festival (2017), New Sounds Brisbane (2017), Sounding the Smithsonian (2019). She has received recognition through APRA/AMC Awards in Experimental Music, Excellence in Regional Australia, Performance of the Year, Excellence as an Individual, and Excellence by an Organisation (Clocked Out), Green Room Awards (Dada Cabaret), Aria nomination (Water Pushes Sand), and prestigious opportunities including Civatelli Ranieri Residency in Italy, Banff Residency in Canada, Australia Council Project Fellowship, Asialink Residency in China and was Artist-in-Residence at the Smithsonian Institute 2019. She has published two books Here and Now: Artistic Research in Australia (Intelligent Arts) and The Piano Mill (URO Publications). Vanessa was Head of Percussion at Queensland Conservatorium 2003 – 2022, the inaugural Director of Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University (2021 – 2024) and is Professor of Music, Head of Percussion (from 2025).

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She studied at the Flinders Street School of Music, University of Adelaide, Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg and received her Masters and Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego where she worked closely with Steven Schick and George Lewis. In addition Vanessa has studied Sichuan Opera with Master Zhong Kaichi in Chengdu, China. She has been on the faculty of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music for 22 years, transforming the field of percussion in Australia, helping to define the field of Artistic Practice in music internationally, and pioneering the performer/composer, interpreter/improviser pathway for students. 

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Vanessa can be heard on Innova, Immediate, Room40, Etcetera, Jazzhead, Mode, Tzadik, Hathut, HLC and Clocked Out labels, and her articles appear in Leonardo, Contemporary Music Review, Intelligent Arts and World Forum for Acoustic Ecology among others. She has performed widely across four continents including Wein Modern Festival, London Jazz Festival, Beijing Festival of Modern Music, Green Umbrella Series, Bang-on-a-Can Marathon, Sydney Festival, Melbourne International Festival, Vancouver Jazz Festival and many more.