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Concert Music

A list of performed concert works by Louis Wishart. These range from trios to full orchestral works.

please contact wishartlouis@gmail.com for score inquiries.

scalp- sounds from the floorboards _ the church, alexandria - 13.07.25 - _jessgleeson-8099

"Children of Aurora" (2025)

For Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Percussion, Double Bass

Commissioned by Ensemble Offspring as part of the Hatched Academy program. Score and recording coming soon...

"Are Ye Then With God?" (2024-25)

For Soprano, Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone, Trumpet, Piano, Percussion, Viola, Violoncello

Composed for "Scalp", synthesising poetry from Emily Dickinson and Edo-Era poet Matsuo Basho, this work explores the audibility and inaudibility of sound, stemming from the sum tones of a simple 2-note motif in the piano’s lowest register. The ensemble colors these “Phantom sounds” and extrapolates upon them in both acoustic phenomena and formal abstraction. This meditation on perception and mortality creates an environment of cyclical energy, where sounds die and rise through the floor, again and again, forcing one to question whether, in these reincarnated forms, one can ever meet “God”.

 

"Eternal Thread" (2024)

For Full Orchestra and SATB

Receiving the Encouragement Award as part of the Willoughby Symphony orchestra's Young Composer Award, Eternal thread explores the intersections between the poetry of Louise Bourgeois and the interrelationships within sonic ecosystems. Borne from a series of detailed transcriptions of field recordings of cicadas and overall ecosystems with natural and synthetic sound sources presents, the piece is structured around a series of tampered and "orchestrated" ecosystems with detailed behavioural relationships between the orchestral families respectively. After a visit to the Art Gallery of NSW's Louise Bourgeois exhibit, a quotation of Bouregois' written in the corner of a gallery wall inspired the bulk of the text for this work. With Bourgeois' allusions of threads as umbilical cords and the spider as Bouregois' Mother, the presence of these ecological elements struck a connection with the sounds of cicada's peppered throughout the piece. Thus, the core of the piece explores threads as drones, being the life support of the piece, ecological relationships within the piece as yearning for love and parenthood. Furthermore, the intensity of the cicada's natural sound alludes to love as something intense and the mythology surrounding cicadas as eternal. This is reflected in the Haiku authored by Matsuo Bashō.

"Föhnkrankheit" (2023-24)

For Clarinet, Soprano Saxophone, Viola, Electric Guitar, Piano and Percussion

Commissioned by Ostrava Center for New Music and Ensemble Garage, this work centers around the phenomenon Föhnkrankheit, translating to "blow-dry disease". Common to alpine regions in Germany and Switzerland, when dense winds rapidly descend mountains, this causes rapid rises in temperature in the underlying towns, causing rises in migraines, depression and suicide rates. This work explores highly contrasting sound worlds of explosive 12 tone cacophony, and white hot dances on unison drones.

"Sundial" (2023)

For Oboe, Trumpet and Violoncello

An exploration of limited-aleatoricism, with time-space notation that preserves free interpretation alongside a rigid structural development. With each phrase being the same 8 second long system, performers are constantly analysing themselves and the piece itself to gradually create a more solidifed interpretation of the time-space notation. However, with each system one note is extended from a staccato to a sustained tone, this create a linear process that provides a pre-composed trajectory.

"I can change you from a distance" (2023-24)

For Full Orchestra

Performed by the Sydney Conservatorium Orchestra, this work utilises the orchestra to create larger quasi-unison gestures. Mimicking the murmuration of birds in flight, the orchestra is treated as one mass organism, with the tension and release lying on how faithfully this concept is adhered to throughout the piece.

 

"In Spite of Time" (2023)

For Flute, Clarinet, String Quartet and Percussion.

Composed as part of a composer exchange with the University of Houston, this work was premiered by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's New Music Ensemble, before receiving it's American Premiere in Houston, Texas by the AURA Ensemble. The work explores non-linear interpretations of time, where the work analyses itself, rewinds, starts over and struggles to define itself. 

"Murmur" (2022)

For Alto Saxophone, Acoustic Guitar, 2 Pianos

Noted for it's exploration of pulse, this work establishes a fractal ecosystem of what could be considered a "pulse". From the opening, ranging from grand piano arpeggios to rapid single note guitar tremolos, this piece establishes this germinal concept to create a diverse vocabulary of unified sound.

 

"Magnet Play" (2022)

For Two Amplified Acoustic Guitars

This work explores amplifier feedback as a source for melodic material in an improvisational capacity within a fixed composition context. With many passages asking for one guitarist to perform a fully notated solo, with the other purely using the proximity of the guitar to the amplifier to create melodic accompaniment. Each guitarist faces their amplifier, set up parallel to the sound hole, with the feedback double vibrating the strings and acoustic body of the instrument.

"New Oil (2021)

For Piccolo Trumpet, Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Drumset and Tape.

This work explores the interaction between digital sounds and human dopamine receptors. With humans' data being the "New Oil", as the piece progresses we see how notification sounds and mouse clicking take different levels of ownership over the performers, by cueing and cutting off players, to either imitating players or being the imitated. 

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