Andrew Saragossi is a Melbourne/Naarm based saxophonist, composer and improviser working within the fields of contemporary jazz, improvised music and new music. He has released 12 albums and toured both nationally and internationally with his diverse and critically recognised original projects including MEATSHELL, Milton Man Gogh and Loose Leaf and has worked with artists such as The Australian Art Orchestra, Shannon Barnett, Phil Treloar, Mike Roelofs (NL) and Kristin Berardi. Saragossi completed his Master of Music studies in the Netherlands in 2020, during which he honed his unique approach to the saxophone, exploring functional uses of extended instrumental techniques in his composition and improvising. In 2024 Saragossi had the honour of being invited, alongside his project Milton Man Gogh to participate in the Banff Musician in Residence (Jan) and Jazz & Sonic Arts (Aug) programs at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, with support from Music Australia & Arts Queensland. In 2022, Saragossi was nominated for the prestigious Freedman Jazz Fellowship and is currently undertaking the Bespoke Artist professional development program with Speak Percussion.
ANUSHA YELLAPRAGADA is an early-career composer with a practice grounded heavily in multi-disciplinary collaboration, art-music, and storytelling. She is currently a Bespoke Artist with Speak Percussion and has created music for various contexts such as chamber music, games, film, dance, and theatre. This has led her to work with various organisations such as Syzygy Ensemble, Ensemble Liaison, Monash Uni Student Theatre, and Monash University Percussion Ensemble. With collaboration forming a core element of her practice, Anusha seeks to work with various artists to bring exciting narratives to life. Additionally, with a background in immunological research, she is excited to collaborate with researchers and use art to engage audiences with science. Anusha is eager to encourage dialogue around issues like the climate crisis which has led her to work on projects such as We The Ocean (theatre) and Wasteland (dance). Anusha wishes to continue developing her practice through boundary-pushing, narrative-based, multi-disciplinary art.
An Honours graduate of the University of Melbourne, BRIDGET BOURNE is an award-winning Melbourne/Naarm-based percussionist and one of “the finest young musicians you could hope to hear within Australia”. She has a particular affinity for explorative group performance, as evidenced in her work with the National College of Dance’s 2022 performances of Banged and Tapped, and the premiere of Caerwen Martin’s tuned cowbell octet i see you like rain in May 2022. An internationally recognised composer, she in honoured to have been one of the finalists in the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards 2024 nominated for Choral Work of the Year for Earth Shaped Hearts composed with Juliana Kay, performed with Alta Collective, and commissioned by ABC Classic Composers' Commissioning Fund.
CALLUM G'FROERER is an Australian is a trumpet player, composer, sound artist, and collaborator based in Narrm/Melbourne. Major recent projects include: Gradient with Olivia Davies and Nick Roux – a 6-hour audio-visual performance-installation for trumpet and interactive video projections and audio processing, presented at the 2023 Perth Festival; Bullhorn – an outdoor Noongar ceremony and performance-installation with Clint Bracknell and Trevor Ryan for the 2021 Fremantle Biennale. G’Froerer is a founding member of improvising ensemble, Phonetic Orchestra, receiving the 2021 APRA Art Music Award for Jazz/Improvised Performance of the Year for Silent Towns, a 24-hour online livestream performance featuring JackTrip international audio networking. G’Froerer is a co-founder and Artistic Committee member of New North, a concert series presenting exploratory music in Narrm's north, with 17 concerts occurring since 2021. He has worked closely with a range of Australian and international composers, and has presented solo recitals across Australia and Europe.
JACK PALMER is a Naarm / Melbourne-based music / sound artist, audio-engineer, guitarist, and music educator. Jack works with computer music production, improvisation, video, and installation. His work is characterised by paradox and emotional contradiction - urgency held by meditative equipoise. Jack has featured as an artist / performer at ACCA, La Mama Theatre, George Patton Gallery, Backwoods Gallery, Cecil Place Precinct, One Night In Footscray, West-Projections festival, Ruthin International Arts Festival (UK), New North, Opus Now, among many others. Jack has worked with local and international collaborators, including dancers, visual artists, poets, and instrumentalists, working across electronic music, contemporary dance, post-rock, and experimental mediums. This year, Jack’s electronic music project ‘Bad Ambulance’ released its 6th studio album, ‘Intel 95’ through revered underground Australian experimental electronic music label Nice Music.
JAMES PAUL (born 1991) is a designer, artist, and researcher obsessed with perception and semiotics. Originally a composer of electronic and art music, James' multimedia practice has evolved through a long history of making innovative artworks and immersive performance works using new and unusual technologies. Their compositions deconstruct and discombobulate the senses, and can be seen in space, on stage, or on screen. They belong to a handful of artmaking collectives pushing the boundaries of making and thinking, including Daniel Schlusser Ensemble, The Family, and (((20 Hz))). James has worked with a broad gamut of collaborator organisations including Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Co., City of Melbourne, Goethe-Institut, RMIT University, Einstürzende Neubauten, and more. James is currently completing a PhD exploring the relations between multimodal experiences (in the form of multimedia compositions) and structures within consciousness.
JASLYN ROBERTSON is a composer, electronic musician and artistic researcher. Excitement for collaboration and interdisciplinary experimentation drives her to work with electronic and acoustic sound, experimental notation, spatialisation, theatre and video as mediums to explore conceptual ideas. She sustains longterm collaborations with footwear designer Alison Pyrke and Melbourne Prize-winning writer Eloise Grills, and performs in the synth duo WE1 XAM with Darlene Aaron. The highlights of her musical career include winning the Homophonic Composition Prize, having works performed at BIFEM, MONA FOMA and Klangwerstatt Berlin, opening for Jon Rose at Rouse Hill Psychedelia, and performing electronics in Cat Hope’s Speechless in Hamburg. Her work has been performed by Ossicle Duo, Decibel New Music Ensemble, the Argonaut String Quartet, Kyla Matsuura-Miller and Tristram Williams.
JESSE VIVANTE is a percussionist, composer, and performer originally hailing from Boorloo (Perth). He completed his studies in 2019 at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) and relocated to Naarm (Melbourne) in 2023 to study at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM). His work looks to unify elements of emotion through the shared human experience and draw physical, visual, and sonic links between the actions of performers. His recent work alongside creatives and choreographers includes Fall With Me for the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) with Katie Cawthorne (2024), directing the live reimagining and Australian premiere of Promises by Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders (2024), performing, composing, and curating Metaphysical at The National Gallery of Victoria (2023) with Rachel Mackie, The Milk Carton Confessions with Thea Rossen and TURA New Music (2022), and the sold out season of Reimagined with Giorgia Schijf (2021).
OLLIE COX is a Melbourne-based composer, drummer and improvisor, who works in the liminal spaces between constructs of sound and music. Drawing in equal measure from his jazz-centric background and love of experimentalism, Cox seeks to craft emotive compositions that flicker between spans of contemplative ambience to frenetic sonic chaos.
RACHEL LEWINDON is a composer, sound designer and pianist. Her sound palette has developed from her classical piano background with contemporary influences of voice, processive ensemble work and timbral electronic synthesis. She is thrilled to have had her work premiered both internationally and nationally, as well as enjoying frequenting the local parks with her canine companion, Henry.
ALEXANDER MEAGHER is an Australian percussionist with an eclectic taste in music, both within the classical repertoire and beyond. From early music and energetic rhythms to sweet melodies, harmonies, and experimental performance theatre, he is adaptable to all sorts of genres and situations, able to blend into an ensemble or stand confidently in the foreground. While classically-trained, Alexander enjoys the multifaceted nature of percussion and music, and his adaptability has led him to perform with orchestras, chamber music festivals, electronic dance music, psychedelic bands, gothic eco-operas, musical theatre, and as a session musician for dance projects and film.
JASMIN WING-YIN LEUNG is a composer and musician who is interested in resonance, intonation and playing the Erhu (a two stringed spike fiddle). She uses mathematical and instinctive extractions to unviel sonic 'shadows' of physical spaces, and examines the potential of resonance to speculate ideas of secondhand memory.
Her work has been shared across Australia, China, Europe and North America, with festivals/presenters including the NOWNow (Sydney), BIFEM (Bendigo), impuls Festival (Graz), Organhaus (Chonqing), Metro Arts (Brisbane), Sound Out (Canberra), and Liquid Architecture (Melbourne). She has worked with leading Australia contemporary music ensembles, including the Australian Arts Orchestra, Ensemble Offspring, Kupka's Piano and Speak Percussion.
Jasmin was raised on Ugarapul and Kitabul country (rural Queensland); studied in Meanjin (Brisbane), Slovenia and Germany; and has lived and worked in Naarm (Melbourne) since 2022.