Composer
“For me, music is an embodied response to rapture, to the joy of living in a transcendent, divinely created world. In my composition, the play of sentience and interconnection within Nature inspires a profusion of detail in continual transformation, propelled by the rhythmic energy of the dancing cosmos.”
Born in Echuca (Yorta Yorta: meeting of the waters), 1967.
Tempany’s work explores interconnections between our conscious experience and the varied ecosystems which sustain life. A tabla player, dholi and workshop artist, Tempany is fascinated by the power of rhythm to dissolve social boundaries and open up new ways of seeing and connecting.
“Composition is a process through which I realise my place in the dancing cosmos. My task as an artist is to create structures which function as an invitation to the dance. Bearing witness to the unfolding of an inexhaustible, fluid play of energy is one half of my compositional endeavour; re-enacting this fluidly inclusive totality at the level of collective experience is the other.”
Tempany’s works have been premiered by leading Australian artists including Michael Kieran Harvey, Mohamed Camara, Peter Neville, Joseph Lallo, Briana Leaman, Peter de Jager, Heather Fletcher and Caroline Almonte, at venues such as Hamer Hall and MoNA.
As a percussionist and workshop artist, Tempany has appeared in Scandinavia as a support for the indigenous White Cockatoo Performing Group, and across Australia at festivals, jazz and classical events, partnering frequently with Melbourne’s SalamFest. She has undertaken numerous artist residencies including at ANAM, the Grainger Museum and IgniteLab. She has used intercultural composition, percussion and dance as tools for community development over several decades. Kate has studied a wide variety of subjects at tertiary level, from physics and vector calculus to social theory, Hindi and Sanskrit and is an ardent amateur linguist.
Tempany has received awards including the Dorian Le Gallienne Composition Award, the Catherine Mary Sullivan Scholarship in Music Composition and an Australian Government Endeavour Award, enabling an extended period of study in Chandigarh, India. She is currently doing a PhD in composition at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where her research focuses on intercultural art music
about Kate
Compositions
Wimmera-Mallee for Sarod and String Quartet with Double Bass
The gently undulating, richly biodiverse Wimmera-Mallee plains inspire processes of layered textural exploration in a search for origins.
Performers: Dr Adrian McNeil with Sola Hughes, Olivia Bartlett, Mattea Osenk, Noah Lawrence and Oakley Paul, at the Rosina Auditorium November 2024
Great Barrier Reef Concerto for West African Percussion and Alto Saxophone
Just as the interdependent strands of West African polyrhythm enable an astonishing variety of expression with relatively limited means, so too the Reef sustains an extraordinarily rich biodiversity through a rapid cycling of limited nutrients, bound together through symbioses which have evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
The Welcome for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
This song is a setting of the beautiful poem, The Welcome, by Australian poet Nettie Palmer. Here it is performed by Heather Fletcher, mezzo-soprano, and Caroline Almonte, pianist.
Barmah Forest for Orchestra
This work is an exploration in sound of Barmah Forest, an extraordinary wetland ecosystem dependent on the flood cycles of the Murray River. This area of great natural beauty also holds profound cultural and spiritual significance for the Yorta Yorta people, who have lived there for 60,000 years.
Honeyeater
for solo trumpet
For the critically endangered Regent honeyeater, music and song are literally a matter of life and death. Accurate performance of the long and complex honeyeater song enables adult male birds to establish a nesting territory and attract a mate. But dwindling population density has also led to a breakdown of the species’ song culture, as there are no longer sufficient male birds to teach the song to the next generation.
This work explores parallels between the Regent Honeyeater song and our human melodic culture. Rhythms and gestures are freely inspired by original recordings of the bird calls. The opening imagines the honeyeater singing freely in the wild, followed by a call-and-response in which an older bird passes the song to a younger one. The melody dies away, fading into a lament as the species plummets towards extinction. An optimistic conclusion projects a recovery of the Regent Honeyeater, and its song culture.
This performance is by Nic Corkeron, for whom the work was composed as part of the inaugural ANAM Set.
Samudra Manthan,
The Churning of the Ocean
The Churning of the Ocean is a Hindu myth depicting the origin of amrita, the nectar of immortality. In the legend, gods and demons range themselves on opposite ends of a giant serpent, wrapped around a mountain which is used as a churning rod. Each team takes it in turn to pull upon the giant snake. Through the play of alternating forces, the ocean is brought to a state of rapid rotation, and from the whirling waters various divine objects emerge, foremost of which is the heavenly amrita.
Cloud Journey for Orchestra
As clouds travel across the sky, they undergo continual transformation, creating fleeting, vivid yet insubstantial images. Exploring the idea of clouds through musical form was also a meditation on how consciousness attempts to order the ephemeral and evanescent. The first few brief passages are symbolic of the breaths which lead into trance states.
Acknowledgement of Country
I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands, skies and waterways, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I pay my respects to the world’s oldest continuing culture.