Hilary Geddes 2019

Background

I am a guitarist, composer and sound artist based in Sydney, New South Wales. I grew up in Griffith, New South Wales and began learning the guitar at the age of six years. Initially inspired by the likes of Angus Young from AC/DC and Murray from The Wiggles, my musical tastes have broadened significantly since then, ranging from the likes of Big Mama Thornton to Showa 44. Living in a country town meant that I did not have regular access to a guitar teacher. This meant that my parents’ CD collection became a primary source in order to discover new music. Artists such as Mavis Staples, B.B King and Taj Mahal would be heavy rotation and I would work out the harmony and blues licks by ear. Upon moving to Sydney to study at the University of New South Wales, I was able to begin regular lessons with jazz guitarist, Steve Brien, through the music programme. It was Steve who encouraged me to audition for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the end of my first year of university. The fluidity and improvisational freedom of jazz always excited me and the harmonic and melodic structures were mystifying to me. As is the case for many guitarists, I had a pretty grounded understanding of blues playing and I could hear a lot of similar elements in jazz music. However, upon starting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, I was a self-confessed ignoramus when it came to the jazz canon and the Australian scene, let alone the theory and technical aspects of playing this type of music, but I was thrilled to have the chance to learn. I have a great love of jazz and I have really valued the chance to study and play with many wonderful musicians.

I was the only woman to complete the jazz course in 2018. This has meant that the majority of musicians, with whom I have close working relationships, are men. However, there are also women musicians who have been great mentors to me since I have been involved in the jazz scene in Sydney. This includes saxophonist and clarinettist, Phillipa Murphy-Haste, and more recently, trumpeter, Louise Horwood. Special mention must also go to Judy Bailey, who, when she took my small ensemble in second year, encouraged me to write original music and explore collective improvisation for the first time. I also gained much from her leadership and ability as an arranger while I was briefly the guitarist in her big band, Jazz Connection.

Artistic Goals

I am a guitarist whose musical background has now been heavily steeped in the idiom of jazz and I am passionate about exploring different processes for improvisation and collaboration with other musicians. One of the aspects I find most stimulating about jazz is that the music offers innumerable ways to approach improvisation—often (but not always) in the form of pre- composed melodic, harmonic and rhythmic information that can be subverted and utilised to improvise. For the past eighteen months, I have been actively involved in the improvising music scene in Australia, leading my own improvising groups and performing in ensembles led by my peers. A large portion of these performances have tended to examine the notion of improvisation as instantaneous composition and place limitations on form rather than specifying melodic and harmonic content as stimulus for improvisation. I have found these experiences to be highly fulfilling and have gained an increased understanding of the myriad of ways in which music can be constructed and performed. This has, in turn, helped the development of my own compositional voice (both in spontaneous and pre-composed contexts), such as employing a specifically guitaristic approach to create music as well as using texts as an organisational device as opposed to a harmonic structure.

Should I have the honour of being the recipient of the Jann Rutherford Memorial Award, I would like use this opportunity to concentrate on my professional development as a composer who uses pre-composed material as a framework for improvisation rather than focus on what is sometimes referred to as ‘free’ improvisation. This is because of a couple of reasons. First of all, I would like to begin the process of creating a body of work that is not limited to live performance, particularly because up until this point, most of my work can be largely defined by its ‘live’ nature. A primary example of this is my sound project Scapes: Soundmapping Woollahra Precinct, which involves using field recorders to document live improvised performances within specific environments throughout the Woollahra Municipal Council district. As an emerging artist, I believe that it is imperative to showcase work that is reflective of my identity as a musician, and also to kick-start the process of what will hopefully be a lifelong endeavour of creating and releasing music. Secondly, I am deeply interested in compositional processes and I would relish the opportunity to focus on this aspect of my artistry, especially since I have spent much of my time in Sydney focussing on the often ephemeral nature of live collective improvisation and exploring technical aspects of the guitar.

With this in mind, I would like to record an album of original compositions under my own name with a group of musicians, all of whom I have long-standing professional relationships and who I will list below. This album is as yet untitled, however, I already have a fairly concrete vision as to what music will go on the album—a mix of compositions that I have written over the past two years and some compositions that are currently unfinished.