Two works by Australian composer Jessica Wells, who has also worked extensively in film orchestration, will be performed at Newcastle Music Festival in June.
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Her well-known company Jigsaw Music has credits on films such as Blinky Bill, Australia and Paper Planes. Breaking into the small world of composition for film, though, wasn't easy.
"Getting work as a film composer is very hard. I came blazing out of film school with nominations and awards," she says.
"It was a very tight boys' club, with a glass ceiling that was hard to crack. That's why we have a small number of women film composers. But that's changing now, the ceiling has cracked wide open."
Wells says her "calling" is composition. Two of her own pieces are being performed at the Newcastle Music Festival in June: Dancing in St Petersburg as part of Borodin and Shostakovich, and Copenhagen Christmas as part of Muse.
"For Dancing in St Petersburg, I had a tricky brief, the concert includes Borodin and Shostakovich," she says.
"The Borodin string quartet is dedicated to his wife, very romantic. The Shostakovich is very different, he was devastated by what was going on around him; he was really shackled, having to write propaganda music.
"How would I connect these two very difficult pieces?
"Both Borodin and Shostakovich had work performed in St Petersburg at the Mariinsky Theatre. Borodin's Prince Igor has a ballet at the end, the Polovtsian dances - the women sing of their Turkish homeland, with Turkish male dancers on stage.
"I decided to go very Turkish, so you hear out-of-tune sounding notes, using the Turkish makam scale.
"The work has two movements. The Borodin-inspired piece comes first, then the second is inspired by Shostakovich's ballet, The Bolt. It got banned after one performance in the 1930s.
"The ballet starts during the opening of a factory. The protagonist is Dennis, a very Aussie character, smoking on the side of the stage. He gets busted for not working hard enough. The young Communists tell him off and he loses his job. The first scene is factory music.
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"The second scene is in a bar: he is drowning his sorrows. You hear the tango, the Charleston, the polka; western music that influenced Shostakovich, that the authorities didn't like.
"I have written a very drunk tango for viola, then it goes into a polka, and I end with the Red Army March. Dennis conspires to throw a bolt into the factory machines. He is taken away to jail.
"The fact that Dennis is striking out against authority is probably why the ballet was shut down."
She wrote Copenhagen Christmas for Alicia Crossley, who was putting together an album for string quartet and recorder.
"I had to think 'How will the recorder interact with string quartet?'. I had been in Copenhagen for six weeks over Christmas, and of course Christmas is huge in Scandinavia," Wells says.
"The first movement is the nisse, cheeky gnomes that look like mini-Santa Clauses with beards and hats. I gave the high-pitched soprano recorder flurries of notes and sharp moments, to give that cheeky character.
"The second movement is completely contrasting, called hygge, a Danish concept, that warm and cosy feeling when it's cold out, and indoors there are candles and warmth.
"I wrote long notes, like a candle guttering, for the strings. I'm trying to capture this medieval city, going for a walk and then back inside to the warmth."
Wells was born in Florida but spent her young life living in several different countries with her Australian journalist father and Hong Kong born mother.
"My school teacher realised I could play the recorder very well at age five," she says.
"He made me try every instrument and piano became my instrument - I could accompany singers and instrumentalists, play in a band, accompany rehearsals for musicals, and learn everything from the keyboard.
"I can't play the piano by ear or anything. But I can sight read anything.
"It is almost like there are two kinds of musicians. One is amazing with their ears; they can play anything.
"I am a reader, hence going into composition was a natural progression because I work with notation all the time."
Wells attributes her development as a composer, and her work in film, to the many different musical genres in which she has worked.
She completed Masters Degrees at the Sydney Conservatorium and the Australian Film Television and Radio School, wrote the Q+A theme for ABC television 11 years ago and, more recently, worked as orchestrator for the movie Elvis.
"The movie Elvis is just about to come out. I have worked as orchestrator for Eliot Wheeler, the composer, for many years," she says.
"This score is amazing because it melds Elvis's music from the '70s in Las Vegas. We recorded it with an orchestra in London and listened in from here."
She explains what a film orchestrator does.
"The composer works on the 'demos' with the director on the computer, it's all done with midi sampling sounds: they almost sound like a real orchestra these days. My company gets the approved file. We do the dynamics, balance, articulation, phrasing, voice leading ... we help get the score recorded, ready for the film mix. I conduct the orchestra sometimes."
As for her writing process, Wells "always try to put some kind of character, some kind of story" into her compositions.
Her work as composer and orchestrator is now highly sought after. Some commissions have enabled her to follow her passion to create serious impactful music.
"I have written a piece for the principal tuba player of the Munich Philharmonic," she says.
"It's my reactions to bushfires, the second movement is called 100 Seconds to Midnight, about impending doom and disaster, and there is a movement about people I have lost in my life, for example, my Aunt died of COVID."
Her work also focuses on conservation issues. She wrote The Night Parrot for Alicia Crossley and Acacia Quartet, after the bird, believed extinct for 100 years, was found again.
"I wrote a piece called Diminishing Species, for Ensemble Offspring, combining video and live performance. I structured it about animal species which went extinct in the '90s," she explains.
"The environmental impact is in the way I have structured the piece. It repeats itself and each time we repeat, I take out a note, until there is only one note, an E. That represents the human condition.
"We don't realise that we have lost things until it's too late. Until it's gone."
Dancing in St. Petersburg is being performed as part of Borodin and Shostakovich (June 3 at 7.30pm). Copenhagen Christmas is part of Muse (June 4 at 2pm). Both concerts are at Adamstown Uniting Church. Bookings at newcastlemusicfestival.org.au
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