MODART

Modart

MODART is a professional development project that provides opportunities for emerging composers to develop works for vocal ensemble, and which then receive public performance by The Song Company.

Biography: Serena Armstrong

Serena Armstrong graduated from the University of Wollongong in 2002 with honours in both music composition and law. She continues to pursue interests in both fields, currently working as a solicitor with a large Sydney firm with fabulous harbour views. Serena also spent a year in the United States where she studied composition, orchestration and electronic music – assisted by a scholarship and part time job as a sound recordist.

Serena spent 2004 working as a freelance composer. In that year she was the Illawarra Grammar school’s Composer-in-Residence and was commissioned by ABC Radio, producing a musical work for small ensemble and a radiophonic work about the Illawarra coastline. Serena was a winner of Monash University's inaugural Treffpunkt composition award.

Studying music as part of Wollongong's cross-disciplinary creative arts department initiated a strong interest in exploring the creative potentials of interdisciplinary work. Serena has worked collaboratively with visual artists, writers, sound engineers, performance artists and musicians.

Program Notes: The Spirit Within Me

This piece explores issues surrounding identity and creativity. The idea stems from reading the personal diaries of Miles Franklin, which reveal a creative, passionate woman full of self-doubt whose creativity is inhibited by the dreary domestic requirements of daily life. The text for this composition is a short extract from Franklin's first novel, My Brilliant Career. The novel contains allusions to Franklin’s concerns with the notion of identity, particularly Australian identity and an Australian "voice" … a concern that continues on through her bequeath of the 'Miles Franklin Award', Australia's most prestigious literary award.

While the text clearly looks to the question of Australian identity, with its harsh description of the outback in drought, it also looks to the creative spirit as a component of personal identity. Within the context of the novel Franklin explores bold questions concerning female identity and creativity. The creative drive sits uncomfortably with the restrictions of eking out a living. The conflict between these duties is such that when the creative urge summons the protagonist she feels she must repress her creativity yet the personal suffering this entails is so severe that death would give welcome relief.