concert music

List of works:

Sound Fields, 2022: piano, percussion, vibraphone, flute, cello (optional images)*

Call and (a) Response, 2022: soprano, marimba, clarinet and electronics

Tipping Point, 2021: piano, percussion, marimba, violin, double bass, clarinet, two guitars, electronics (optional video)*

To the Sea, 2021: solo violin

Currawong Call, 2021: solo instrument and electronics (optional video)*

‘Untitled’ from Nineteen to the Dozen 2019: SATB singers

Immerse, 2019: cello, viola and electronics (interactive visuals)

SON-ombra (String Quartet no.1), 2018

Vivre Sa Vie - Composer's Cut, 2017: percusson, piano, flute, clarinet (optional video)*

People of this Place, 2016: solo bass clarinet

Snow, 2016: piano, clarinet, cello (optional video)*

Uncovered Ground, 2015: Baroque trio (vln, vla, cello) and modern ensemble (violin, flute clarinet, percussion, piano)

Ground, 2015: violin, viola, cello

EXIT, 2015: flexible ensemble and video with electronics*

Gouttes d’un Sang Etranger (Drops of Foreign Blood), 2014: cello and clarinet OR viola da gamba and (SATB) saxophones and electronics (optional spoken word and video)*

Quotet, 2013: piano quartet (animation)

Threading the Light, 2012: for SAB voices, string octet, percussion, vibraphone and electronics

Dual, 2010: soprano, contralto, piano, percussion, vibraphone, violin, viola, cello, oboe, clarinet.

scores can be purchased from the Australian Music Centre.

please contact composer for electronics files

*Please request image files from composer if interested in multimedia performance

More details, reviews and excerpts below…

Call and?… (a) Response (2022)

Felicity’s new trio in response to the song of the critically endangered Regent Honey Eater was premiered by acclaimed performers Jane Sheldon (voice), Claire Edwardes (percussion), and Jason Noble (clarinet) as part of artists Murray and Burgess’ exhibition ‘Lost Song’.

Performances: 3 and 9 December, Installation 3 Dec 2022 through 29 Jan 2023

Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Katoomba, NSW

The recorded version was included in the installation which ran through 29 Jan 2023. See artist interviews below.

To the Sea

world premiere success at ANAM set festival!

Felicity’s solo violin work for Adrian Biemmi, To the Sea, premiered in this incredible collection of new works by leading Australian composers.

Performances: May 13-15, 2022, Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne.

CURRAWONG CALL (2021)

This is a piece for solo instrument and tape, composed for cellist Freya Schack-Arnott to perform at 100clicks West Fireside concert season in 2021. In 2022 it was selected by Backstage Music for performance by violinist Veronique Serret in ‘Earthbound’ - which the video below documents.

Wilcox generated an index of symbols while listening to the currawongs in her Blue Mountains backyard, assembling these into a graphic score. The symbols each represent a variation in the rich lexicon of currawong calls, which the performer is asked to interpret while responding to a recording of currawongs Wilcox made from her garden. The video is a slowed-down loop of a live photo she took at her fire-pit, where the score was also created.

This piece is not so much about 'doing' as listening. It asks us to come off our elevated human perches down to tree-level, and become one with the birds.

“In soft conversation, Serret’s violin joined recordings of birds collected in Wentworth Falls in a gorgeous aural re-negotiation of our position in relation to our environment. Falling somewhere between argument and acquiescence, the reciprocal interaction between music and nature was an offer of hope from Wilcox” Maddy Briggs, Classikon

Tipping Point, 2021

This septet was commissioned and performed by guitarist Andrew Blanch and Ensemble Offspring and accompanied by images produced by media artists Peachey and Mosig, and featured in ‘The Surge’ program, which will tour again in 2023. It was a Finalist for Best Performance in the 2022 Australian Art Music Awards!

“For Felicity Wilcox’s Tipping Point, the images were of breathtaking natural beauty and devastating loss... Wilcox’s music explored disrupted order, adding notes and noise to smooth rhythms and lines.”

★★★★ Peter McCallum, The Sydney Morning Herald

“Felicity Wilcox’s Tipping Point was the most involved work of the evening. With … visuals further accentuating the environmental theme, a gently flowing minimalistic quality soon gave way to bursts of frenetic energy from the full ensemble, featuring virtuosic marimba work from Artistic Director Claire Edwardes.” – Adam Jeffrey, classikON

PEOPLE OF THIS PLACE, 2016

This collaboration with leading Australian clarinettist, Jason Noble, reflects my experience as a woman from the greater Sydney region living with an awareness that I live and work on unceded Aboriginal lands. I chose the bass clarinet for its enormous range and ability to evoke different sound worlds on one instrument and within one piece.

In creating and offering this piece for performance I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal people.

People of this Place was selected from over 160 entries for TURN UP Festival, Arizona (2021), performed by Jackie Glazier (see clip to the right).

Philadelphia-based clarinettist, Paul Demers also performed People of this Place in New Music Network’s, Musical Ecologies program in Philadelphia, on 23-24 February 2020 and in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s WomenNOW concert-cast on 28 May 2020.

It was also performed by Jason for Ensemble Offspring’s Birdsong at Dusk Sydney Festival (2020), and Canberra International Music Festival (2017; 2019). More recently, Jason toured the piece to Europe in 2023, performing it with other works by Ensemble Offspring at Pantopia Festival, Berlin, and Balderin Sali Helsinki. Australian clarinettist Ros Dunlop also toured People of this Place to the US in 2023.

The recording by Jason Noble was selected for inclusion in the ABC's Women of Note Vol. 3 digital release in March 2021! Keeping very fine company, it sits alongside works by other leading Australian composers in a beautiful collection that celebrates diverse music by women.

Ensemble Offspring, Songbirds CD out now!

People of this Place also features alongside other pieces for flute, clarinet and percussion, that evoke the varied and lush sounds of nature on Ensemble Offspring’s latest realse: Songbirds - a beautiful collection of new works by a stellar list of living Australian composers including Felicity Wilcox, Fiona Loader, Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose, Brett Dean, Tristan Coelho, Jane Stanley, Gerard Brophy, and Kate Moore.

untitled from Nineteen to the Dozen, 2019

In this delicious blend of old and new vocal music, nineteen new commissions are set against fragments of art music from the last thousand years, and together form a dialogue about the nature of vocal music and the deepest form of musical expression. For The Song Company.

World Premiere: Tue 22 Oct 7.30pm | Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House and multiple concerts in ACT, NSW, Vic and WA Oct-Nov 2019.

‘The Song Company’s Nineteen to the Dozen project was a wild and wonderful ride through the landscape of Australian contemporary music … each showing a distinctive fresh voice…Felicity Wilcox evoked disjointed irrational dreams.’Peter McCallum (SMH) ★★★★½

IMMERSE, Sydney festival 2019

IMMERSE, an interactive work incorporating live chamber and digital music performance, immersive electronic sound and three-dimensional (3D) visual design, was created specifically for the UTS Data Arena, an interactive audiovisual space that offers state-of-the-art, multi-screen projection and multi-speaker sound diffusion technology.

Featured in sold out shows for Sydney Festival 2019, it was a collaboration UTS researchers in Interaction Design (FEIT), Music and Sound Design (FASS), and UTS ensemble-in-residence, the Australia Piano Quartet (APQ).

SON-ombra, 2018 (String Quartet no.1)

Commissioned by Dr Sean Botha, SON-ombra, was performed by Sydney Art Quartet, at "Secrets Through the Soundglass", Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, February 24, 2018, and at the Yellow House March 7-9, 2018.

‘Wilcox’s two-movement String Quartet no. 1 explores the intriguing concept of sonic traces or shadows.’

Shamistha de Soysa, ‘SoundsLikeSydney,’ 30 July 2021

Vivre Sa Vie, Composer's Cut, 2017

Vivre Sa Vie, Composer's Cut, was commissioned by the Australia Ensemble and had its World Premiere performance in the Sir John Clancy Auditorium, UNSW, on September 18, 2017.

With Jean-Luc Godard’s kind permission, Wilcox edited his 1962 French New Wave classic into a 16-minute version for screening in the concert hall to accompany the piece!

Subsequent performances were held in 2018 by Ensemble Offspring at
The Sewing Room, Perth, 11 September
Subiaco Arts Centre,13 September, and Albany Entertainment Centre, 15 September.

Broadcast: ABC Classic FM, September 19, 2017

Snow, 2016

World premiere:100clicksWest Salon, November 19, 2016. Performances also at Salon Callan, Oct 2017, Create Space, Curl Curl, Nov 2017, “Glories of the Score” conference, AFTRS, Dec 2017, Adams State University, Colorado, December 2017.

Excerpt: Mvt 2-Falling, for piano, cello and clarinet.
Cello-Freya Schack-Arnott, Piano-Felicity Wilcox, Clarinet-Jason Noble

‘Falling, from Snow, Movement 2 is the exquisite second movement from Wilcox’s trio for clarinet piano and cello. It is every bit the ‘reverent quality of calm’ inspired by snowfall that Wilcox aims to convey’

Shamistha de Soysa, SoundsLikeSydney

Uncovered Ground, 2015

Commissioned for Ensemble Offspring and Ironwood, “Broken Consorts” tour.
World premiere: February 20, 2015, Bah’ai Temple Hobart. Other dates in Feb-March 2015 and August 2016 include:  Burnie Arts Centre, 45 Downstairs, Melbourne, Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House, Newcastle Museum.
Broadcasts: ABC Classic FM, 2015-16, ABC Radio National, 2015.

EXIT, 2015

Commissioned for Decibel New Music Ensemble, electroacoustic “animated notation” work.

World premiere: “Anime”, PICA (WA), September 5, 2015.

‘Wilcox’s bound together the visuality of film, with music, and travel...It spoke so eloquently of its matter that it was successful.’

G.H.Mathwin, Sensible Perth

Gouttes d’un Sang Etranger
(Drops of Foreign Blood), 2014

A concert-length electroacoustic piece with spoken word, text, video, and photography.World premiere: Vivid New Wave Sound, Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, June 6, 2014. Viola da Gamba: Anthea Cottee Saxophone: Nathan Henshaw Spoken word: Felicity Wilcox.

‘An intriguing mix of juxtapositions and oppositions … consistently absorbing, with many colours and contrasts. Here we savour the full range of the soundworld created: the delicate and the richly textured, the languid and the furiously explosive, the fragmentary and the extended passage work.’

Margaret Steinberger, ClassikON, 27 July 2021

Quotet, 2013

Interactive chamber music/animation work. Commissioned for the Australia Piano Quartet and UTS Department of Animation.