A Chat with Composer Juliana Kay
Juliana Kay
What started out on Zoom is now about to go live in the world. For our concert – On This Earth We Dance, we are excited to premiere ‘Henhouse’ by Juliana Kay, made possible by the City of Melbourne Triennial Arts Grant.
Juliana Kay is a composer, conductor and teacher with a lifelong interest in choirs and choral music. Her compositions are performed regularly by children’s and community choirs across Australia, and she works in close collaboration with choirs to co-create new works. Juliana is the founding director of innovative choir Choral Edge and assistant conductor of the internationally renowned Young Voices of Melbourne and Exaudi. She brings her extensive experience as a choral singer and conductor to write music that is unique and beloved by singers of all skill levels. ‘Henhouse’ is her first foray into orchestral composition.
Ahead of the concert, we had a chat with Juliana.
Hi Juliana, we are so excited to finally share your piece with the world. Can you tell the people a bit about yourself, and your journey with music?
Music has always been fun for me and was never supposed to be a career! I have sung in choirs my whole life and can play some mediocre French horn, and now a lot of my musical life is conducting and composing.
After high school, I went off to the USA and did a Bachelor of Liberal Arts, majoring in Geography and Portuguese, and planned to have a career in environmental conservation. But I discovered I hated sitting at a desk and much preferred hanging out with musicians, so I scraped in just enough music units to become a high school music teacher.
Being a teacher allowed me to learn a variety of skills, including musical technologies, orchestral conducting, writing accessible music, teaching and editing compositions, directing musicals, running events and engaging tough crowds! This year I left the classroom to work exclusively with choirs and freelance projects, but I am grateful to still work with schools and young people.
What was the inspiration for ‘Henhouse’? Tell us more about the piece.
Over the 2020 lockdown, I became interested in how digital platforms could help community musicians connect and experiment creatively, in ways that we wouldn't normally do in a rehearsal.
I worked with my choirs on highly collaborative composition projects, which involved stitching together bits of text, structural ideas, visual prompts and recorded melodies, thrown onto a digital canvas by singers. After creating a few compositions like this, I pitched Ingrid the same idea - get VYSO on Zoom for a few sessions to throw some ideas around, experiment and record these ideas.
Using Edward Lear's poem ‘The Yonghy Bonghy Bo’ as a launching point, we played around with making images, poems and music from the text, then recorded ourselves playing and singing, adding layers to each other's compositions on the multitrack platform Soundtrap. One little piece that came out of this exercise was chicken themed (from a line in the original poem) and was a clear stand-out. So I took this theme and turned it into a complete, narrative-driven piece.
How was your experience collaborating with VYSO on this piece?
VYSO was wonderfully receptive to creating and experimenting in the early stages of this project, and it was great for me to step out of "Choir Land" and work with orchestral musicians. In the rehearsal and performance stage, it has also been joyful to watch the orchestra get behind the narrative and the silliness of the piece.
Can you talk a bit about your creative process?
Walking is a big part of my creative process. I'm hopeless at a desk so I go on big walks to let my mind first wander, then gradually focus until I have a piece mapped out and can more or less play it in my head, before I write anything down.
What do you take inspiration from?
I love art that tells stories. I read a lot of fiction, listen to storytelling podcasts and love going to the theatre. As a conductor, I think dramaturgically when I program a concert and thread different pieces together. As a composer, I want my music to go somewhere, whether as a literal narrative or an emotional journey.
Where can our audience follow your work?
My website is julianakaymusic.com
My choir is choraledge.com.au @choraledge
I also run pop-up workouts to classical music! classicalmusicworkouts.com.au @classicalmusicworkouts