V.Tunes
Vanessa is a represented artist at the Australian Music Centre. Scores are available for purchase through their website.
The Imaginary Aviary
Devised by Vanessa Tomlinson (concept and lead composer)
Each performer creates their own birdsong and bird calls based on the following brief. Each performer is acknowledged as a co-composer in this work. This work was commissioned by *Bleach Festival for performances in the HOTA Gallery, August 2023. It was re-worked for performances in the bush at Easter at the Piano Mill 2024. This is an ongoing work, with more species being added all the time.
Download the score
Beacons
For Ocean, Electronics and Acoustic Instruments
By Lawrence English and Vanessa Tomlinson
Supported and premiered by Bleach Festival with support from Australia Council for the Arts. June 30th, 2022. North Burleigh Headland. For 6 or more trombones, 3 or more trumpets, 3 saxophones, 3 percussion. Watch here.
Curious Tig
For The Immersive Guitar
Curious Tig is an exploration of sonic possibilities inside the new instrument TIG, premiered as part of Curiocity Brisbane 2021. Performed by Karin Schaupp and the composer, this event was live-streamed as the finale of Curiocity, and provides insight into the acoustics and sonic potentials of this new instrument.
Watch the premiere here. Please note music starts at 11'26"
Percussion at Dusk
for solo tamtam
Percussion at Dusk is a new solo work for tamtam, presented as part of Lawrence English's Listening Etudes in the Brisbane Festival 2020. As an outdoor performance piece, the composition defined the listening space through making an invisible bubble - inside you could hear the piece, outside you could watch on an wonder what was happening. The work was performed at three Brisbane locations, each with exceptional vistas of the city. The score uses the changing colours of the sky at dusk, and the shape of the cityscape to move through the material.
Further information about the performance can be found here
Balance
For solo percussion
Balance is a glimpse into our world of co-dependence; human, animal, living, above and below the ground. From an ecological perspective each sound needs to find a way to be unique, to be heard. But things also need to be in balance - and here the performer is asked to balance to perform this work; the delicate rustle of beans with the left foot while conjuring an exquisite song from a cymbal with the hands; the scrumming of sandpaper in the feet and the infinite pitch variations of a stone tapping a metal bowl. Each act requiring physical effort, precision, balance and care.
Balance is a solo re-working of a percussion quartet Static, inspired by months of listening and living in the Australian outback. Balance also requires intense listening as the performer, alongside acceptance, independence, respect, patience and time. This piece was commissioned and composed for Rebecca Lloyd-Jones who can do impossible things. And she knows a thing or two about balance.
This work was premiered at University of California in 2020.
For information about the score, please contact the composer.
Cycles
for any number of performers playing different keyboard instruments
plus bass drum, bell, horn and shaker
premiered by Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Arabella Teniswood-Harvey, Michael Kieran Harvey 2019
Cycles consists of 4 independent rhythmic cycles with added punctuation from percussion - played by the keyboard players themselves.
For information about the score, please contact the composer.
Watch the premiere of this work here.
Heavy Stop
for any number of performers on any instrument
premiered by Clocked Out with Cat Hope, 2019
Heavy Stop belongs to a series of pieces that prioritise listening as the navigational tool through the composition. Starting with 5 doing words - in this case brushing, caressing, heavy stopping, interfering, and crying - the musicians build a language throughout rehearsals, and then freely explore the terrain in performance. There is no score to follow except for the sonic building blocks that the musicians have collaboratively constructed. I don't know what will happen. - V.T.
For information about the score, please contact the composer.
Watch the premiere of this work here.
The Oxbow Soundwalk
Site-specific constellation of individual compositions by other artists.
A mega composition of other compositions in the Australian bush
premiered at Easter at The Piano Mill 2019
View the videos together, turn them on and off to create your own experience.
Lucy and Bubbles
for all 16 pianos and pianists in the Piano Mill.
Premiered 2018.
Vibrations in a Landscape co-composition with Erik Griswold
for twenty percussionists
premiered by BaDaBoom percussion at Easter@Harrigans Lane 2017, further performances include Tyalgum Festival 2018, and a reworking "Vibrations in an Architecture" (Australian Percussion Gathering 2018) and "Vibrations in Hanson Dyer Hall" (Melbourne Conservatorium 2024).
View Video long version
View Video short version
Sonic Dreams: Extinction
for any number of performers on any instrument
commissioned and premiered by Greywing ensemble, Perth 2017
View Video with Tomlin|Fergus Duo
View Video with Clocked Out
Listen to Greywing ensemble perform the work
Watch Sonic Dreams California performed by Clocked Out and Mary Oliver
Read more in Mat Klotz article in Media Culture Journal "Vanessa Tomlinson's Sonic Dreams"
Intimacy/Bath of Vibrations
for unamplified music boxes/for a choir of bowed cymbals with solo piccolo
premiered at Queensland Conservatorium "Clocked Out with Simone DeHaan
New Sounds Brisbane Festival 2017
Download Score Bath of Vibrations
Static
for four percussionists
premiered by Early Warning System, Brisbane Powerhouse 2014
Watch a performance by Early Warning System
"Vanessa Tomlinson continues exploring the theatre and physicality of sound production in her conceptual soundscape Static. The performers line up along the front of the stage each with a small table of bits and pieces and a bass drum at their feet....Static is a fascinating work that draws attention to the link between gesture and the production of sound using common place actions". Greg Hooper, RealTime RT123, from the world premiere.
Still and Moving Paper
for solo percussionist playing paper, pencils and footboooks.
premiered by Vanessa Tomlinson, ABC Studios Brisbane 2014
Watch a performance by the composer here
Nostalgia
for a group of listeners
premiered at Orpheus Institute, Ghent 2013
Brick by Brick
The Wide Alley project
For erhu, trombone, bass, piano, Chinese Opera percussion, percussion, Dizu
premiered at Brisbane Powerhouse 2007
Cotton Man
The Wide Alley project
For erhu, trombone, bass, piano, Chinese Opera percussion, percussion, Dizu
premiered at Brisbane Powerhouse 2007
Music for the Banal, the Obvious, the Everyday
Percussion solo
Premiered LaMama Musica Series, La Mama Theatre, Melbourne
April 30th, 2007
Double Transition
For 2 percussion, clarinet, trombone
With Cath Clover
Premiered Melbourne Town Hall, June 4th 2006
White Christmas
For recorder, viola, clarinet, trombone.
Premiered South Melbourne Town Hall, November 2nd 2006
Bowls
For 3 players on 12 Chinese Rice Bowls with water.
Premiere at Chengdu Arts Centre, Sichuan Province, January 2002.
Performed by Erik Griswold, Zou Xiangping and Vanessa Tomlinson
Electric Mahjong
musical theatre work for 4 players
Premiere at Chengdu Arts Centre, Siahuan Province, January 2002
Performed by Erik Griswold, Zou Xiangping, Jiang Ping, Vanessa Tomlinson
Old Flex
For 3 performers with instruments built by Neil McGlauchlan (gongs and lithophones).
Premiered at Footscray Arts Centre as part of Double Venturi series, August 2001.
Dear Judy
for solo Balloons
Premiered as part of Virtuosic Visions series at the Melbourne Museum, March 2001
Listen to duo version for piano and balloon here
Practice
For solo voice and percussion (2000).
Premiered at the Centre foro Research in the Computing Arts, University of California, San Diego
Listen here.