Emerging Composers Forum 2025
Soundstream invites five emerging composers to participate in the 2025 Emerging Composers’ Forum (ECF) between May 15-19 2025.
The 2025 Emerging Composers’ Forum, taking place between May 15-19 2025, will see five participants join a creative development intensive at Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park, an extraordinary landscape that inspires experimentation and collaboration.
The fifth iteration of the ECF creates space for composers across cultures to share knowledge, working with senior song women from Central Australia, and leading international site-specific music practitioners. This opportunity fosters the sharing of ideas, collaboration, cultural knowledge exchange, new concepts and instruments, and inspiration to push boundaries in all directions. At the conclusion of the Forum, the five composers will each receive a $2000 commission to write new works inspired by their experience. These works may subsequently be presented by Soundstream.
The 2025 ECF provides an extraordinary opportunity to work with the Inarma Choir (SA/NT), an acapella chamber choir who will share their rich Indigenous choral tradition. The Choir are senior songwomen whose spiritual roots span 60,000 years. They have been singing on Country together in Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara for 50 years, and have recently been joined by their younger family members, strengthening intergenerational ties and making the choir wiru mulapa (strong).
The 2025 ECF also embraces site-specific music-making, taking the Aldinga Scrub and found objects as inspiration, with mentorship from esteemed site-specific music practitioners Jesse Budel (AUS) and Cheryl Leonard (USA).
Congratulations to this year’s emerging composers:
Frankie Dyson Reilly is a Meanjin (Brisbane)-based interdisciplinary composer, artist, and researcher currently completing her Doctor of Musical Arts at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.
Working with graphic scores, projection technology, and field recordings, she creates vivid audio-visual depictions of Australian landscapes and fauna which illustrate intimate companionships between humans and natural worlds. Her works, which emphasise collaborative creativity and multi-sensory scoring, have been recently commissioned and performed by The Muses Trio, Contra Guitar Duo, Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Tura New Music, and ABODA QLD. In 2024 she held positions as Artist-in-Residence at Mt. Wilson & Mt. Irvine (NSW), at the Piano Mill in Willson’s Downfall (NSW), and as a DOTS+LOOPS Performance Mentor (QLD).
Recent projects include an audio-visual commission documenting sea turtle migration for the Contra Guitar Duo and 2024 Milbi Festival in Bundaberg, and an ongoing research collaboration with musician Alexandra Gorton exploring sensory sound-making through graphic scoring and co-improvisation.
Photograph: Rani Tesiram.
Georgia Oatley crafts tender electronic music, weaving ambient textures, trip-hop grooves, and soulful vocals. Inspired by the organic beauty of the land, her sound is immersive, sensual, and deeply emotional—a rich sensory experience that invites listeners to connect and let go. Having graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Sonic Arts in 2023, she is set to complete her Honours in Creative Practice in 2025. She has recently been announced as a performer for Womadelaide 2025 after a sold out debut album launch at The Lab and New Found Sound 2025. Some past performance highlights include, for the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Adelaide Biennial, Monster Theatres, “A Civic Space” by Julian Day and “Untitled (Death Song)” by Megan Cope, 2020.
Photograph: Chelsea Farquhar.
Isabella Rahme is an emerging composer, harpist and vocalist living and making music on Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia). Her practice as a musician includes writing for choirs and ensembles, creating sound art and installations, and improvising on her electroacoustic harp.
Isabella’s compositional explorations often centre around the use of symbolism and gesture to express concepts and emotions. She emphasises texture within her work, focusing on the construction of evocative soundscapes.
Isabella’s practice as a harpist includes explorations with electric harps and electronics, including live-processing of the instrument. She incorporates her vocal training into the construction of her electroacoustic soundscapes, often manipulating her voice as well.
Recent ensembles she has worked with include Ensemble Offspring, Trio Immersio, and JACK Quartet, and her work has been broadcast in Radiophrenia and shown at the Annecy film festival. Isabella has also created installations for festivals curated by Backstage Music and The Music Box Project.
Photograph: Chloe Wells.
Oscar Lush is a Naarm-based artist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist whose intersectional practice explores the links between sound, memory, and the body. Through compositional sound collage his work blends acoustic instrumentation with archival audio and field recordings, utilising electroacoustic techniques to move between tonal and concrète musical languages. Most recently he has been experimenting with the intersection of graphic, real-time scoring, sculpture, and improvisation, developing interactive systems for notation which have the potential to positively affect the way performers embody sound. He completed a B.MUS in Interactive Composition at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2024. Prior to his studies he spent a decade practicing as a singer-songwriter, releasing multiple solo albums, and touring extensively. In the last few years he has composed for film, theatre, and installation, and in 2024 his collaboration with art collective Entangled - What Lives Beneath - was a finalist in the North Sydney Art Prize.
Photograph: Georgia Spain.
Vicki Hallett is a musician, composer, and sound artist known for her diverse projects. She has collaborated with Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project and has showcased her work through installations and performances at notable venues such as ISEA24, Caboolture Gallery, McClelland Gallery, Parliament House in Melbourne, and the Royal Society of Victoria. One of her significant projects involved recording stories from the Wadawurrung people and incorporating environmental sounds into the installation titled "Journey on Wadawurrung Country." Vicki has received commissions from the National Wool Museum and is a recent contributor to Oxford University Press. She performs in unique environments across various regions, including Africa, Australia, and the Amazon, and was awarded a Highly Commended in the 2023 Sound of the Year Award.