NED COLLETTE

In our very first BLOG instalment we talked to Ned Collette about his composition for TLSQ, life in Berlin and other musical musings. ​
You can see Ned performing his piece; Quintet for Strings, Voices and Synthesizer with us at The Melbourne Recital Centre on November 26th. Two shows: 4pm and 7pm. For bookings and more info visit HERE

​When did you know that you wanted to be a musician?
Beatles.
What was your first instrument?
Piano.
What is the strangest music gig/job that you’ve done? 
Painted silver wearing underwear hung from a ceiling 20 feet up playing guitar. Though of course at the time it seemed the natural thing to do.
What is the strangest non-music job you’ve ever done?
Painted silver not wearing underwear hung from a ceiling 20 feet up? In a particularly desperate moment I worked at Luna Park. Centrelink made me do it.
Tell us about the music you have composed for TLSQ; was the process different from other projects you have written for?
Yes and no. The scoring was obviously more involved than a lot of what I normally do, but I think sonically and harmonically it still represents some sort of continuity that exists in all my work. Quiet, layered, trying to push the harmony outside slowly so that maybe you don’t notice it go, the  idea  of the ‘space-frame’, as Francis Bacon put it. I took the opportunity, especially in the first part, of being able to frame things with silence, and will try to bring that back into my song work more.  People bang on about silence, but then one day the penny actually drops. Because it was mostly written on piano I feel like the gestures are quite pianistic, so it will be interesting to hear how that translates to the quartet. The second part is totally the opposite… it’s a big building wall of harmony, but the harmony is fairly static, so in a way I hope it represents a kind of harmonic silence, or stasis.

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