Meditation Garden
composition
posted on 2024-04-04, 04:52 authored by Timothy MunroTimothy Munro, Vanessa TomlinsonVanessa TomlinsonVanessa Tomlinson and Tim Munro were commissioned to create an outdoor work for the BLEACH* festival.
Called Meditation Garden, the 40-minute work was originally composed for a specific location: a tree-lined tranquil lake at the Gold Coast Regional Botanic Gardens. A group of flautists and percussionists were threaded in among audience members, who were immersed in a multi-sensory experience.
History
ERA Category
- Original Creative Work - Musical Composition
Funding type
- Private funds
Eligible major research output?
- Yes
Research Statement
Meditation Garden is a new collaborative 40-minute composition by Vanessa Tomlinson and Tim Munro for flutes and percussion that explores choreographic and place-based soundmaking. Extending Tomlinson’s compositional practice (Beacons 2022, The Oxbow 2019, Imaginary Aviary 2023) and Munro’s extensive experience working on placed based compositions (Sila: The Breath of the World, 2017, Ten Thousand Birds 2019, Comfort Music 2019, Crowd Out Chicago 2017), Meditation Gardens is designed as an immersive listening experience that journeys through and opens up different ways of being outdoors, together, with sound. The creation of Meditation Garden was the first collaboration between Tomlinson and Munro – bringing together decades of individual experience with participatory and site-specific performance practices. Meditation Garden extends this knowledge through the intentional composition of a sectional piece that sounds in and around the audience with all performers mobile. The audience are seated/lying together inside a large but non-explicit circle. Meditation Garden furthered Munro’s work in notating and performing birdsong of local areas, ending with five minutes of notated birdsong, which served as jumping-off points for musical conversations between the players. The mobile performers respond to different compositional and choreographic prompts to produce different sonic effects. These include static breath sounds; clouds of sound – using gestural language to activate a sense of space and movement – amongst the audience; slow waves of tamtams with a sonic glow from roaming; and finally birdsong. Meditation Garden was commissioned by Bleach Festival and received two performances in their Botanic Gardens series in August 2023. Further performance at the Social Impact for Music Making International Conference occurred in Brisbane in November 2023. The score to the composition is published through the Australian Music Centre. This work was documented by Greg Harm.Publisher
Bleach FestivalPlace of publication
Gold Coast Regional Botanical GardensCopyright notes
© 2023 This work is covered by copyright. You must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses.Duration of performance
40 minutesPerformance size
- Group
Number of work performers
Open 10 - 20Estimated size of audience
400Authors of work performed
Tim Munro Vanessa TomlinsonWas the work disseminated?
- Yes
Form of dissemination
- Public performance
Scope of dissemination
- State
Did the work go on tour?
- No