Arts Centre Melbourne Launches 5x5x5: JOURNEY

Members of the public are invited to participate in an aural and visual online journey through Arts Centre Melbourne as part of the 5x5x5 project. Arts Centre Melbourne is launching 5x5x5 : Journey, five new compositions by five emerging composers, five minutes in length, and all inspired by an item from the Performing Arts Collection. Using cutting edge 3D photography of Arts Centre Melbourne's front and back of house spaces, the public can take the same journey as the composers while listening to their compositions, via Arts Centre Melbourne's website from April onwards.

Now in its fourth year 5x5x5 is an award-winning Arts Centre Melbourne mentoring program for five Victorian-based composers aged 30 years and under to build their skills, professional networks and public profiles. The project supports these emerging composers, this year mentored by Peter Knight, Australian Arts Orchestra artistic director, to each create a new composition of five minutes to illuminate, articulate and draw inspiration from an unusual object.

This year the composers were invited to reflect on the theme of Journey and an item from the Performing Arts Collection. The artists include Carolyn Schofield, a composer, pianist and electronic musician, Kitty Xiao, the founder of Nimbus Trio and Jakob Bragg, a Melbourne based composer specialising in excessively ornamental and microtonal music. Also selected for the project were Samantha Wolf, a composer, sound artist and arts administrator and Joe O'Connor, an improvising pianist and composer skirting the boundaries of jazz and art music. Arts Centre Melbourne partnered with students from the Australian National Academy of Music to record the new compositions.

The composers were asked to seek inspiration from items in Arts Centre Melbourne's Performing Arts Collection. The items included a Handspan Theatre company mask, a set model by Nigel Triffitt for the Victorian State Opera production Metamorphosis, photographs of the Sydney Dance Company and a tambourine given to singer Margret RoadKnight for her 50th birthday.

Arts Centre Melbourne is home to the Performing Arts Collection, the nation's leading specialist collection documenting Australia's circus, dance, music, opera and theatre heritage. Established in 1975 and now formally recognised as a State collection, it consists of over 600,000 items including costumes, designs, programs, photographs, posters, personal memorabilia and archival material. The Performing Arts Collection is used regularly for research and also forms the basis of Arts Centre Melbourne's on-going exhibition program.

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