This week is a very special insight into the world of being a music critic, an arts journalist and thinking about how to listen to the new, the challenging or listening differently. Declassify welcomes Dr Harriet Cunningham is a writer and researcher, best known as music and theatre critic for the Sydney Morning Herald. She writes for publications including The Saturday Paper, Limelight and the Financial Review. She has recently completed doctoral studies at UTS writing a cultural history of Dartington International Summer School of Music. She has been known to play the violin. Join us as we u ..read more

In the first episode of Declassify, join host Victoria Pham in conversation with award-winning composer for screen and concert hall, Felicity Wilcox. Currently a lecturer at UTS, Australia, Felicity is a proactive advocate for gender equity and diversity in Australian Music and is a prolific researcher and speaker at international events concerning the representation of women and non-binary composers in the film and television industries. Listen to their conversation unpacking the nuances of sexism, the relationship between equality in the domestic sphere and a creative working life and profes ..read more

This week Declassify has invited a familiar voice from ABC Classic FM onto the episode – Stephen Adams. Stephen is a beloved voice on the radio waves having worked with ABC Classic FM since 2004. He has been instrumental in programming, commissioning and broadcasting Australian music and new music. He is also an inexhaustible composer and performer with a recently released album, who aside from all this work, also runs his own podcast ‘New Waves,’ This episode’s conversation revolves around the nuances of media and institutional responsibilities relating to programming. How can statistically g ..read more

Welcome back to Declassify Season 2 and we’re already on our last episode of this year! This week is someone quite remarkable and someone whose work I am sure many of you already know: Australian and Uk-based flautist, curator, educator and arts producer – Tamara Kohler. Tamara has performed and premiered countless new works of music for festivals around the worlf such as the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, Bang on a Can Festival and Darmstadt. She is the founding member and co-Artistic Director of contemporary ensemble, Rubiks Collective – an ensemble whose mission is about showcasing contempo ..read more

And Declassify returns! We’re already halfway through this season, so quickly! This week the podcast welcomes none other than cross-genre whiz and interdisciplinary extraordinary, composer, performer, producer and curator Danielle Eva Schwob. Currently based across New York City and Los Angeles, Danielle is a staggeringly active artist and musician across multiple forms and disciplines. Her music has been featured at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! and Philip Glass’s MATA Festival, just to name few. In this episode Danielle discusses her interdisciplina ..read more

This week, long-time collaborators and friends Victoria Pham and artist, academic and filmmaker James Nguyen get together to talk about childhood experiences of classical music and a perspective of working with classical musicians from those outside the art world. James Nguyen is in his own words is “Asian passing,” dabbles with painting, documentary filmmaking, and conceptual art. Born on a coffee plantation in Vietnam, Nguyen arrived to Australia by plane. Having studied Pharmacy, Nguyen then pivoted to complete his Bachelor in Fine Arts and is now completing his PhD. He has been a Samstag s ..read more

It's already episode 4 for this season, and today DECLASSIFY welcomes onboard the remarkable activist, tenor, composer and musicologist Jeremy Dutcher. Jeremy's music transcends boundaries: unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home,and teeming with the urgency of modern-day struggles of resistance. A member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, Jeremy first did music studies in Halifax before taking a chance to work in the archives at the Canadian Museum of History, painstakingly transcribing Wolastoq song ..read more

This week Declassify welcomes on media artist, educator and composer, Ciaran Frame. Ciaran is passionate about cross-disciplinary collaboration and education, seeking a place in the world of data, technology and music. He has found a home in interactive and generative computer music, creating everything from sonification toolboxes to make music out of plants, to performance works where players must purchase their musical material. Our conversation in this week’s episode, Ciaran is the author and researcher behind the fantastic data collection series and publication, the Living Music Report. Th ..read more

Welcome back to Declassify Season 2! I am so pleased to welcome you all back to this new season, and most importantly, to begin this following season with a host of international guests and conversations. I am so pleased, not only to have returned, but to welcome Declassify’s third guest for the season, pioneering percussionist Claire Edwardes. Claire is a leading percussionist working as a soloist, recording performer and chamber musician and is the current Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring. She is a forefront figure for the commissioning and performance of contemporary Australian music ..read more

And we return with Episode 2 of this season’s Declassify. This time this episode features none other than pioneering music educator and internationally renowned and Grammy nominated violinist, Robert McDuffie. Robert is the co-founder and artistic director of the Rome Festival for Chamber Music, and the founder for the McDuffie Institute of Strings at Mercer University – a unique course for musicians offering holistic training in music, liberal arts and business. In this episode, Robert talks about the need to reform the strucutres of the classical music industry, the significance of business ..read more