Nurturing Australian Artists
Hatched Academy
What is Hatched Academy?
Established in 2014 to support exceptional young Australian performers and composers, Ensemble Offspring’s Hatched Academy has evolved to include three streams: the Hatched Composer Intensive, where five emerging Australian composers create a new work, mentored by guest composers and the ensemble, culminating in a week long residency; the Hatched Associate Artist position giving an elite Australian instrumentalist the opportunity to perform alongside the ensemble and create a unique solo project supported by our resources; and the Hatched Mentorship Program offering one-on-one online mentorships for young musicians all over Australia.
In 2022, acclaimed Berlin-based Australian composer Brett Dean became the Hatched Academy Ambassador and a composer mentor for the Hatched Composer Intensive. To learn more about Hatched, watch our short video and to get a feel for the experience, read our participant testimonials here.
Read the Hatched Composer Intensive 2023 Info Booklet:
Download PDF
Applications for Hatched Composer Intensive and Hatched Mentorship Program are open from 1-31 March 2023. Apply now!
Streams
Hatched Composer Intensive
The 2023 Hatched Composer Intensive provides a one-of-a-kind opportunity for five emerging composers from around Australia to be mentored throughout the year by their chosen international mentor on a new work for Ensemble Offspring. This culminates in an intensive week of workshops with Ensemble Offspring, industry specialists and a lead composer mentor, culminating in a professionally documented showcase of the composers’ new works. The Hatched Composer Intensive offers composers the opportunity to have their music workshopped by some of Australia’s finest chamber musicians with years of experience in new music. Feedback is delivered in a warm, honest and constructive manner and composers are supported in their plight to create the most idiomatic and effective chamber work possible.
Throughout the week the participants are given the opportunity to discuss and share ideas throughout informative industry sessions on programming, funding, marketing, audience engagement, and First Nations protocols. The participants will be connected with important industry contacts and provided with a professional recording of their new work for their portfolio, helping to constructively build their early careers. All participant costs are covered for the program and participation is valued at $4000 per participant.
Watch the 2022 showreel, read the testimonials and download the 2023 Info Booklet to get a feel for the experience.
Applications for the 2023 Hatched Composer Intensive are open from 1-31 March 2023. Applicants must be available 6-11 November 2023 for the Intensive week in Sydney.
Apply now
Hatched Mentorship Program
Our Hatched Mentorship Program consists of up to two one-on-one Zoom sessions with a mentor chosen from among Ensemble Offspring’s experienced core musicians and collaborating composers/performers. These artists generously share their experience through instrumental or composition lessons, as well as offering industry, marketing and grant writing advice. The Hatched Mentorship Program occurs throughout the month of July 2023 and is open to participants from the age of 16 upwards. The program supports artists of diverse backgrounds, hailing from metropolitan and regional areas and a range of experience levels.
In 2023, the mentors are Claire Edwardes (percussion/Artistic Director, Ensemble Offspring), Lamorna Nightingale (flute/Artistic Director, Backstage Music), Jason Noble (clarinet), Véronique Serret (violin), Blair Harris (cello), Benjamin Kopp (piano/composition), Roland Peelman (piano/conducting/Artistic Director, Canberra International Music Festival), Mindy Meng Wang (guzheng/composition), Bree van Reyk (drums & percussion/composition) and James Henry (guitarist/composer).
Applications for the 2023 Hatched Mentorship Program are open from 1-31 March 2023.
Apply now
Hatched Associate Artist
Each year an elite Australian instrumentalist who demonstrates a true passion for art music and new chamber music is selected to join Ensemble Offspring as part of our annual concert season. A new addition to the program is the facilitation of the creation of a unique project supported by the ensemble’s industry knowledge and resources. The experience of being Ensemble Offspring’s Hatched Associate Artist provides a unique opportunity to build a successful performance career specialising in living new music and sculpting ones own musical pathway. Our Hatched Associate Artist is paid professional performance fees and all travel costs are covered for interstate artists.
Creative and business mentorship is provided by our core musicians, as well as external mentors selected by the Associate Artist. The program is valued at $10,000. Watch this short video to get a feel for the experience.
“Hatched Academy was a great opportunity to experience a comprehensive overview of what it’s like to be a freelance artist in an ensemble setting – basically synthesising that knowledge into a package to take back with me when I pursue my own things.” – Jacob Abela (piano), 2015 Hatched Associate Artist
Applications for Hatched Associate Artist 2024 will open from 1-31 July 2023.
Mentors
2023 Lead Mentor: Damien Ricketson
The music of Sydney-based composer Damien Ricketson is characterised by colourful sound-worlds, novel forms and is often multisensory in nature. Damien was the co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of the new music organisation, Ensemble Offspring (1995-2015), and the Program Leader of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (2015-2019). Major works have included the immersive show Sound Touch (2022), the experimental opera The Howling Girls (2018) and the hybrid music-dance production The Secret Noise (2014).
Damien is a Sydney-based composer, artistic director and academic. Seeking a music for the body rather than the brain, his work is characterised by unusual instrumentations, open forms and is often multisensory in nature integrating sound with other media.
From 1995-2015 Ricketson was the co-founder and Co-Artistic Director Ensemble Offspring, a unique arts company dedicated to adventurous new music through whom much of his music has been performed. From 2015-2019 he was the Program Leader of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney.
2021-22 Mentor: Tristan Coelho
Tristan Coelho is an award-winning Sydney-based composer who specialises in concert music and film projects. His music draws inspiration largely from either nature, especially the idea of amplifying otherwise soft and delicate sounds, or our digital, data-driven world.
Project highlights include Rhythm City toured by Zubin Kanga in 2019; Smell of the Earth performed by Tambuco Percussion; read/write error commissioned by Ensemble Offspring and finalist in the APRA Art Music Awards; A line is a dot premiered by Claire Edwardes; and an interactive music soundscape walk inspired by the local surrounds of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains.
As an active music educator, Tristan has written numerous works for student ensembles and runs creative music workshops around Sydney. He has recently completed a new music education project in collaboration with flautist Lamorna Nightingale titled Other Voices, designed to enhance students’ composition, songwriting and music technology skills.
2019-20 Mentor: Kate Neal
Kate Neal is an artist with over 20 years experience as a composer, arranger, teacher, artistic director and collaborator. Her artistic practice has earned scholarships from the Dutch Government (1998), Accademia Musicale Chigiana (2005), and the Hephzibah Tintner Fellowship (2006), among others, and Neal has enjoyed working as an orchestrator and arranger for many pop and rock bands, feature and independent films, and choreographers and dance companies.
From 2004-2007 she worked as a sessional composition teacher and also lectured in Music and Image at the Victorian College of the Arts, and since 2006 she has been incorporating extra-musical parameters within the notation of a musical score, such as physical gesture, design, light and choreography. In many cases, these works provide a variety of unprecedented collisions of unlikely visual and musical cues. From 2009-2013 Neal was a Graduate Fellow at Princeton University in the USA. In 2013 Neal returned from the US to take a one-year position as Composer in Residence for the Four Winds Festival. In 2015/16 Neal was the recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship, allowing her to compose six substantial new works over two years.
2019 Mentor: Ken Thomson
2018 Mentors: Matthew Shlomowitz, Cathy Milliken & Amanda Cole
Matthew Shlomowitz teaches at University of Southampton, co-directs Plus Minus Ensemble with Mark Knoop and Vicky Wright; and runs the podcast Soundmaking with Håkon Stene.
Cathy Milliken won international recognition as a leading composer, creative director, performer and educational program consultant. Cathy has devised and composed works for theatre, opera, choir, orchestra, chamber ensembles radio and film, and created installations, and was Composer in Association with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra from 2018-2020.
Amanda Cole is a composer of instrumental and electronic New Music. Her compositions feature microtonal structures, overtones, interference beats and fusions of electronic and acoustic timbres. Amanda has a Bachelor of Music (Hons.1) and a PhD in Composition from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she is now a sessional lecturer in composition.
Participants
2020 Hatched Academy Participants
Associate Artist: Will Hansen (double bass, NSW)
Summer School Composers: Christine Pan (NSW), Rhys Little (NSW), Connor D’Netto (QLD), Andrew Chen (VIC), James Hazel (NSW), Monica Lim VIC). The 2020 mentor is Kate Neal. Listen on Soundcloud
Hatched Home Commission: Simon Charles (WA)
Home Academy Mentorships: Eduardo Ruiz (VIC), Liam Wooding (VIC), Nick Ashwood (NSW), Phoebe Bognàr (NSW), Katherine Howarth (NSW), Nadia Burgess (NSW), Gabrielle Cadenhead (NSW), Lily Bryant (ACT), Christopher Healey (VIC), Anna Rabinowicz (VIC), Liam Mulligan (NSW), Marlene Radice (ACT), Robert McIntyre (VIC), Ellie Harrison (QLD), Abigail Sutherland (SA), Tim Newhouse (WA)
Open Mic: JACHLO: Jacques Emery (double bass) & Chloe Kim (drum kit)