MOSSO | Music in Motion
-
Saturday, 2 May 2026
9:00 am
-
National Film and Sound Archive
McCoy Cct, Acton ACT 2601
-
In Association with
CIMF takes over the National Film and Sound Archive
9am – 5pm
A dynamic, all-day celebration of contemporary music, moving image and spatial sound, MOSSO showcases leading Australian composers, improvisers and performers across a striking range of multimedia experiences. The National Film and Sound Archive becomes a vibrant, multi-venue festival hub, inviting you to roam galleries, cinemas and performance spaces, with access to the café, courtyard and permanent exhibitions.
ARC Cinema
FOREVER CHANGED
9am-9:50am
Nat Bartsch’s immersive, soothing and neurodivergent-informed solo piano performance with surround sound and sensory-aware visuals. (more info)
FIONA HILL PORTRAIT
11:30am-12:30pm
This portrait of Composer-in-Residence Fiona Hill reveals her breadth across chamber, film and experimental forms, featuring Circumstance (with Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Contrechamps), Śūnyatā and the premiere of UnderOnBelow. Spellbinding audio-visual works by an extraordinary Australian artist. (more info)
MELT
4:15pm-5pm
Jordan Rodger’s evolving collaborative project of improvisation and experimentation merges with avant-garde film and international guests for MOSSO, creating loop-driven soundscapes shaped by post-rock and contemporary jazz within a cinematic interplay. (more info)
Gallery
DIGITAL ECHOES
10am-10:50am
Aaron Wyatt’s solo viola is encircled by Eugene Ughetti across five percussion stations, where networked sound maps physical and digital landscapes into shifting, austere, otherworldly environments. (more info)
RETURNING
1pm-2pm
An international collaboration uniting four powerhouse Indigenous composers, Nardi Simpson, Nicole Smede, Aaron Wyatt and Davin Ojala, with Swiss ensemble Ensemble Contrechamps in a visually driven program of new chamber works at the highest level. (more info)
MAPPA
3:15pm-4pm
Weaving sound, movement and ancient craft traditions, Mappa unfolds as a shared space between art and audience. Devised by Fiona Hill and Miranda Wheen, audiences are invited to wayfare freely through the transformed NFSA gallery. (more info)
The Courtyard and Foyer
LYREBIRD BRASS
Spatial brass activating the unique acoustics of NFSA’s Courtyard and art deco Foyer, across two gritty and virtuosic programs of contemporary brass works. Led by Lyrebird Brass, Australia’s leading brass ensemble, the performances champion new works, diverse voices and groundbreaking brass performance. (more info)
11:05am-11:25am
Cathy Likhuta Apex Predators
Elliott Gyger In the Presence of So much Sky (World Premiere)
Nardi Simpson Yulanbiirr
12:35pm-12:55pm
Kate Neal Fanfare
Alice Humphries Uncertain Meditations
Stuart Greenbaum 15 Years On (World Premiere)
Theatrette
SCENERY
2pm-3pm
An intimate ambient audiovisual duo where Sebastian Field’s layered guitar and Nicci Haynes’ live visuals shape slow-burning landscapes of drifting tone, fragile harmonics and shifting light, inviting close, attentive listening. (more info)
ARTIST Learn more about the artist
Artist Alex Monro
Alex Monro is an Australian violist, harpist, and composer. Born in Adelaide in 2006, he is currently pursuing a double degree in Music and Advanced Science (physics) at the Australian National University and performs professionally on both viola and harp. He composes for chamber ensembles, films and plays, and creates digital media, and is a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra’s (AYO) Youth Council.
Alex is a violist in the Canberra Symphony Orchestra (CSO), playing with acclaimed conductors such as Jessica Cottis and Erin Helyard. He was a Principal Viola in the AYO’s 2026 National Music Camp and is a violist in the AYO flagship orchestra. He will perform with the AYO Momentum Ensemble later in 2026. Alex has appeared as a guest artist with Apeiron Baroque, with Canberra CityNews describing him as a “confident and extroverted figure throughout”. He has performed in Parliament House and has performed solo at the Hungarian and Croatian embassies. His awards include the 2025 ANU Whitworth Roach Performance Scholarship, the Wesley Uniting Church Forrest Music Scholarship, and multiple prizes in Musica Viva’s Strike a Chord chamber music competition. Alex studies viola with Marianne Yeomans, and studies harp with Alice Giles.
Artist Ensemble Liaison
Described by Limelight magazine as a ‘national treasure’, Ensemble Liaison is one of Australia’s leading internationally acclaimed ensembles. The Ensemble was founded in 2007 by David Griffiths (clarinet) Svetlana Bogosavljević (cello) and Timothy Young (piano) who each have leading reputations as solo instrumentalists on an international level. They presented their first concert series at The Edge, Melbourne, in 2007 and have become known as a tour de force, recognised for imaginative and innovative programming, setting the trend for brilliant collaborations with leading artists.
In addition to being co-presented by the Melbourne Recital Centre for 15 years, Ensemble Liaison have appeared at the nation’s premier festivals including the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Port Fairy and Woodend Winter Arts Festivals. For their 20th Anniversary season they were featured as part of the Live At Yours Series in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Further afield the Ensemble have toured New Zealand for Chamber Music NZ and in 2012 gave a series of festival performances in Central Europe. In 2021 they appeared at the Mimir Chamber Music Festival, Texas and as a global featured artist at the International ClarinetFest from Fort Worth Texas. Next season they look forward to appearances at the Mahler Festival in Austria and the Ravanelius Festival in Serbia.
The creation of new works is also a priority for Ensemble Liaison, with commissions by Paul Stanhope, Paul Grabowsky, John Novacek, Ian Munro, Gordon Kerry, Tony Gould, Stuart Greenbaum, Elena Kats-Chernin, Jane Hammond, Michael Dooley, Aleksandar Sedlar, Mark Viggiani and Mary Finsterer. Countless arrangements by the trio have also formed an integral part of their programming and artistic vision.
Ensemble Liaison have released 6 internationally acclaimed recordings including the 2024 release of ‘Crossing Paths’ (MOVE Records). They have also recorded with Melba Recordings, Tall Poppies, ABC Classics labels, as well as their own highly successful EL Records. And, they are firm broadcast favourites with ABC Classic and 3MBS.
Photo credit: Laura Manariti
Artist Fiona Hill, composer-in-residence
Emotive, textural and organic, Fiona Hill’s ‘striking timbral exploration of abstract sonic properties’ (Music Trust) and ‘seamless working in of live electronics’ (Sydney Arts Guide) blends new technologies with corporeal evocations to generate detailed and immersive sound worlds. Composed through the layering of textural and harmonic sounds her music creates a deep and expansive bedrock on which to place melodic materials concerned with a freedom of spirit.
Fiona has a deep collaborative, multi-disciplinary based practice, through response and interaction with sonic materials as well as through direct collaboration with other artists. Her work has been recognised with multiple awards and nominations including winner of ‘The Stelvio Cipriani international Film Scoring Competition’ 2022, winner of ‘Best Film Score’ at the Seoul International Short Film Festival 2021.
Fiona has been performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony orchestra, Sydney Dance Company, Ensemble Offspring, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows and multiple electroacoustic works. She has a Masters in Screen Composition from AFTRS, a PhD in Composition from the University of Sydney and is currently lecturer in Composition for Creative Industries at the University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Photo credit: Deep Hill Media
Artist Aaron Wyatt
Aaron is an accomplished violist, conductor, composer, programmer and academic. He has played in a wide variety of ensembles across many different genres, and is a long term member of the award winning Decibel New Music ensemble. As well as performing with the ensemble, he is the developer behind the Decibel ScorePlayer app, the group’s cutting edge, animated graphic notation software for the iPad.
An emerging conductor, he was nominated for a Helpmann Award for his role as musical director of the premiere season of Cat Hope’s opera, Speechless, and is the director of Ensemble Dutala, Australia’s first First Nations chamber ensemble. An advocate for Indigenous classical music and musicians, he premiered Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s work, Nanyubak, for viola and orchestra as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and during a conducting engagement with them he became the first Indigenous Australian to conduct one of the state symphony orchestras in concert. He has since gone on to work with the ASO and SSO, and conducted the premiere of the first opera in Noongar, Gina Williams’ and Guy Ghouse’s Koolbardi Wer Wardong with the WA Opera.
As a composer he has been a participant in the Ngarra-Burria First Peoples composer program, writing for Ensemble Offspring. He has also written a number of electro-acoustic works, using a mix of traditional and animated graphic notation for Decibel, GreyWing Ensemble, Ensemble Dutala, and for Kyla Matsuura-miller’s Freedman Fellowship project, Three Conversations.
Artist Ensemble Contrechamps
Ensemble Contrechamps is an ensemble of soloists specialized in creating, developing and disseminating instrumental music of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Ensemble is dedicated to highlighting the diversity of aesthetics and formats making up the contemporary and experimental scene. For over 40 years the Ensemble Contrechamps has been working hand in hand with a large number of composers, conductors and artists – Rebecca Saunders, Pierre Boulez, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Christine Sun Kim, Michael Jarrell, Jacques Demierre, Olga Kokcharova, Sofia Jernberg, Vimbayi Kaziboni or Heinz Holliger, among others. The Ensemble also showcases the multiple skills and unique talents of its member musicians.
Contrechamps strives to develop fresh formats such as installation-performances, radiophonic concerts, research laboratories or collaborative processes. The Ensemble is a hybrid, both orchestra and collective, which enables it to adapt to a variety of artistic constraints and to the proposals of the artists it works with. Within this context, Contrechamp’s partnership with the Geneva Haute école de musique is meaningful inasmuch as it allows its members to remain in touch with the freshest ideas, as well as impart their expertise to coming generations.
Recognized for its work and invited to perform on international stages, Contrechamps regularly appears at events such as Ultima in Oslo, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Venice Biennale, and Ircam-Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The Ensemble’s many partners in Geneva include La Bâtie, Archipel, the Grand Théâtre, the Ensemble Vide, the OCG, the Théâtre Am Stram Gram, the ADC,the cave12 and the St. Pierre Cathedral. Contrechamps has performed on a variety of stages throughout Switzerland like the Gare du Nord in Basel, Schauspielhaus in Zurich or Plateforme 10 in Lausanne, to name just a handful.
A colorful outreach program and exciting educational activities involving schools and museums allow our musicians to impart their passion to a public of all ages and from all walks of life, and to enrich and fortify the local cultural fabric. Contrechamps Editions publish significant books on contemporary music.
The Ensemble has made over twenty recordings and, since last season, has been offering a new collection of vinyls on its own Contrechamps label in collaboration with Speckled-Toshe.
Ensemble Contrechamps is supported by
Photo credit: Guillaume Collignon
Artist Lyrebird Brass
Comprising some of Australia’s top brass musicians, Lyrebird Brass is a collective of artists dedicated to performing the finest brass chamber music. The group’s mission is twofold: to engage Australian audiences through exceptional artistry and accessible programming, and to expand repertoire through new commissions with a particular emphasis on Australian music and works by composers from underrepresented demographics. Members have performed across the globe in many of the world’s premiere ensembles, each bringing a unique musical background to the troupe. Lyrebird Brass is the first professional Australian brass ensemble to feature women as core members.
The name ‘Lyrebird Brass’ is a homage to a unique songbird native to the ensemble’s hometown of Melbourne. Lyrebirds are known for singing for hours each day in a combination of their own distinctive song and mimicked noises and can even vocalise multiple melodies simultaneously. The name is also a reference to Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre (Lyrebird Press), part of Louise Hanson-Dyer’s legacy which has so benefited the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music where each member teaches.
Artists: Carla Blackwood (horn), Joel Brennan (trumpet), Rosie Turner (trumpet), Don Immel (trombone), Alex Jeantou (tuba).
Photo credit: Mads Sørensen
Artist Eugene Ughetti
Eugene is the founder and Co-Artistic Director of Speak Percussion as well as the Artistic Director of the Canberra International Music Festival. He is known worldwide as a trailblazer in art music whether as director, composer, performer or conductor.
He has collaborated with iconic figures in new music such as Pierre Boulez, Liza Lim, Steve Reich, and John Zorn.
As a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician Eugene has worked across the globe. He has premiered new concerti with Australian Symphony Orchestras and worked with renowned conductors including Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Sir Andrew Davis, and Valery Gergiev.
Eugene’s compositions have been commissioned by The Australian Ballet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra the ABC, and other prestigious institutions. His works have been featured at international festivals and venues, including Darmstadt (Germany), Roulette (USA), SONICA (UK), Ruhrtriennale (Germany), Transart (Italy), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Noordezon Festival (The Netherlands), SIPFest (Jakarta), National Museum (Singapore), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), and George Town Festival (Malaysia).
Eugene has received many prestigious awards, such as the inaugural Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, the Freedman Award for Classical Music, and the Luminary Art Music Award (organizational). He is a PhD candidate at Monash University, focusing on Signature Pedagogies in Creative Collaboration.
Eugene’s classical training, diverse leadership experience, and adventurous spirit make him a pioneering force in the Australian music scene.
Photo credit: Bryony Jacks