INSIDE THE MUSICIAN. Felicity Wilcox: In Search of New Ways to Sound

Felicity Wilcox. (Nat Cartney@ Rolling Media, February 2021.)

Written by: Felicity Wilcox

I fell in love with music through playing piano in my childhood. When I asked for piano lessons, the one condition my mother gave me was that if she ever had to nag me to practice, the lessons would stop. She never had to, and I learned from 7 to 18. I also learned clarinet and trumpet, played in school bands, and sang in school choirs to quite a high level, but piano definitely formed the basis of my musical identity and still does. From even before my lessons started I would work out tunes I heard by ear, and from about the age of 12 I started to make things up. I often lost interest in the arduous task of sight-reading, which I was bad at; the final goal of faithfully replicating another composer’s notes felt a little pointless when I realised how much better another player might do that and how well my ears led me where I needed to go. If the piece was by Ravel, Debussy, Grieg or Chopin, whose harmonies and gestures transfixed me, the chance to absorb their beautiful languages felt worth the effort of long hours of practice. Yet, when I played freely, time flew; I felt like a swimmer in a boundless sea.

So, on leaving school I followed this impulse to improvise and decided to pursue jazz piano. I was young and impressionable, and I did not see the trap waiting for me when I took up lessons with a respected teacher in Paris, a man of some 60 years, who awed me with his musical flair and improvisational mastery. I was very willing to learn but sadly this experience proved destructive; within a few weeks he subjected me to sexual harassment, which each lesson grew increasingly insistent and humiliating. Discouraged and distressed, I stopped going; I believe he would have raped me if I had continued. The experience upset me so much I also stopped playing piano for a year. It was not just about the physical violations that had taken place, I felt deeply wounded that he had not seen I had talent to nurture, had not cared about the music in me, which for me is the greatest gift a teacher can bestow on a student: taking their music seriously. I am very glad I kept going once I returned to Sydney, and studied jazz piano with Chuck Yates, who taught me some really important foundational things about jazz harmony that I have used both in my composition and playing since.

The experience in Paris was the first awakening I had into a musical world that can be deeply sexist and dangerous for women – projecting its desires and demands onto us, telling us how we should (and should not) behave, look, dress, sing, play, and compose. This is ironic and confusing in a profession that emphasises originality! For me it worked like a road block each time I encountered it. I experienced such things well into my 30s, even as an established composer. Whenever I walked into a space dominated by men, some of whom could be predatory, hostile, or biased in ways they weren’t even aware of, I would feel unsafe, and subconsciously question my right to be in the room. Now I am committed to advocating for change so that this stops happening once and for all. I’m pleased that the conversations about gender are much more open and productive than they were when I was younger. However, I remain deeply disturbed and disappointed that these same issues persist in 2022. I am leading a study of women and minority genders in music at the moment that has revealed around 50% of female and gender-diverse music creators have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace; those are today’s statistics! It is my goal to see these inequities in music end within my lifetime because they materially impact women’s progression and contribution to music.

*Felicity at around 23, a couple of years after she started out on her composition work in screen music.*

I’m grateful to have somehow made my way in music despite these hurdles. I owe this not just to my own determination and hard work, but also in no small measure to my mentors and champions. The first of these was my mother, Christina Wilcox, who gave me my start as a screen composer via some outstanding documentaries she directed. I was 20 and studying composition with Peter Sculthorpe and Peter Platt at Sydney University, so I jumped at the chance to score Sands of Time – a beautiful nature documentary about Fraser Island. Back then, there were no courses in screen music composition available in Sydney, so I learned on that first job that a good score contains motifs that support the narrative arc and generate cohesion within the overall composition. After that film, I had a screen credit, evidence I could do the work, and from there I went on to score over 60 productions for national and international networks, ranging from documentaries to series, shorts, and feature films.

I have always been curious about sound. Not just ‘musical’ sound, but raw sounds, languages, accents, birdsong- all sound fascinates me. I remember as a child going out of my way to crunch on gravel paths, or to make sure my boot heels struck a hard surface for the gratifying ‘clop’ that would result. This desire to elicit different qualities of sound has always driven my composition. When I started out doing soundtracks, it was the late 80s/early 90s; the time when digital music technology was emerging. I was drawn to experimenting with samplers to extend the sounds I made beyond the capabilities of acoustic instruments. Without learning about musique concrete until much later, I found myself working in that idiom, sampling sounds collected on location, or recording my own, and making loops and textures with them, turning them into beats, and overlaying them with synths and acoustic instruments. A score I made for another of my mother’s films, Patterns of Landscape (about the Australian painter Fred Williams) incorporated location recordings of fence wires vibrating in the Pilbara landscape. I sampled these and they formed drones beneath my parts for live soprano and cello. I also used stones gathered in the desert as percussive elements throughout that score. This unusual sound world was generated from the environment that so inspired Williams – which felt important. This approach laid the foundation for my many electroacoustic film scores. Over the course of the years I compiled a fairly extraordinary library of original samples from literally all over the world, taken from location recordings and repurposed as music and sound design in my scores.

*Felicity dressed for a gig with her band Helgrind ca.1994*

The 90s was the decade that established me as a composer. I was asked to compose my first feature film score for the thriller Redheads, which earned me an AFI (AACTA) nomination in 1992. I made history as the first woman ever nominated for this major screen music award, and in all the time since, only two women have won it: Elizabeth Drake and Amanda Brown- which again illustrates what female screen composers are up against and points to the comparative weight of our achievements. After that accolade, I not only became very busy with my soundtrack work, and in composing for radio, theatre and other live settings but I also played in numerous bands. This was a time when I made many musical connections that have lasted to this day. One important colleague I met during this time is composer-guitarist John Encarnacao. In our improvising duo Spazm, which gigged sporadically from 1995 to 1997, we dressed up in snorkels, goggles, duct tape, wigs and petticoats, and played noise music: me on synth and samplers, which I put through various effects pedals; and John on electric guitar and Casio keyboard with a transistor radio built into it, which he channelled into our jams. It was totally free improvisation, and a joyful expression of the extremities achievable through an exploratory approach to sound collection and music-making.

*Spazm – John Encarnacao (L) and Wilcox (R)*

This partnership has endured; John and I now play with bassist Lloyd Swanton in our improvising trio W.E.S.T. (Wilcox, Encarnacao, Swanton Trio), where we bring a similar curiosity to our sound. In W.E.S.T. I play piano, but I use the entire apparatus of the instrument to make sounds. This can involve playing the strings and wooden structures with everyday objects from my kitchen drawer, jewellery, clothing, or creating preparations on the fly. John and Lloyd do the same thing with their own instruments. Sometimes the results are startling. I feel so fortunate to have these two amazing musicians as partners in crime. Our golden rules are: not to judge each other; and to sit out at some point during the set. Otherwise that’s it!

*Felicity Wilcox with W.E.S.T. (Wilcox, Encarnacao, Swanton Trio). Credit, Aniera. June 2019*

Again, it was my curiosity about exploring alternative ways to make music that guided me, as an established screen composer in my mid-30s, to return to study composition at Sydney Conservatorium. I had been using electronics to make sounds that sat in that liminal space between noise and music, and I wanted to transfer that skill to acoustic instruments. I needed to know more about what they could do, and exactly how to notate those gestures. And so my journey into new music began. Now I feel like this is where I belong; composing new music for ensembles like Ensemble Offspring, who encourage the kind of experimentation I have always pursued instinctively, I am free, supported to be me, to explore sound without constraint.

*Improvising inside the piano (with W.E.S.T.). (Aniera. June 2019)*

Fortunately, my background as a composer for multimedia has been recognised and embraced by the art music world, with the likes of The Australia Ensemble, Decibel, The Australia Piano Quartet, and others commissioning me to compose works incorporating images. In my chamber music I treat images as another instrument in the texture of the composition, allowing them to breathe through a work but not dictate the music, which is different from working in the film industry. Whether it’s fixed video, animated notation, interactive visuals, still photographs, abstract colours and shapes, or drawing musical gestures from paintings as I am currently doing for the Pythia Prize commission for Rubiks Collective, I’m very much in my happy place with these pieces! It is the closest thing I can imagine to living inside a dream, where everything is heightened, sensuous, and immersive. I’m excited to be heading to Melbourne soon to workshop ideas with Rubiks for our sonic interpretations of the abstract expressionist artworks of Helen Frankenthaler. When I look at her works, I can hear music based on their lines, shapes, and colours, so it will be interesting to devise a methodology for how to translate those graphic elements into the music I hear. No doubt it will involve a combination of techniques that I will devise in collaboration with the ensemble.

*Felicity Wilcox with Ensemble Offspring Artistic Director, percussionist Claire Edwardes and fellow composer & teacher Damien Ricketson February 2015.*

Which brings me to the final, and perhaps most important thing to share here: without other people and the input they give me, I would never be able to compose. From performers like Jason Noble, who shared his deep knowledge of the bass clarinet in contributing to my piece, People of the Place; to icons such as Jean-Luc Godard, who approved use of his 1962 film, Vivre Sa Vie, for my commission for the Australia Ensemble, Vivre sa Vie- Composer’s Cut, or Marin Marais, who contributed posthumously via his delicious 1717 French Suite, to my long-form multimedia work, Gouttes d’un Sang Etranger; to Damien Ricketson, my doctoral supervisor, whose work and ideas about music have had a lasting influence on my own. Or Ensemble Offspring, who have championed me through two commissions: Uncovered Ground (with Ironwood), the titular track from my recent album, and Tipping Point– a rich audiovisual collaboration with media artists Peachey and Mosig. And finally, my wonderful family who sustain me with their love, and the exquisite Blue Mountains, traditional country of the Gundungarra and Darug people, which inspires my creativity every single day. If my curious musical impulses ever beguile and excite, it is because my muses give them shape, power and life.

*Felicity Wilcox improvising a solo piano set at 100clickWest, Felicity’s house concert series in the Blue Mountains. (Alister Spence. March 2022)*

Biography

Felicity Wilcox is an Australian composer and academic. She has worked extensively as a composer and music director, with a highlight being her role as Assistant Music Director and Composer for the Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony in Sydney 2000. As Felicity Fox, she composed the soundtracks to over 60 screen productions, for which she has received international recognition – winning the FIFREC Film Award (France) for best music, winning/being nominated for several APRA/AGSC Screen Music Awards (Australia), receiving three AACTA/AFI nominations, and an Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) nomination. She is the current recipient of the prestigious Pythia Prize – an internationally competitive commission for Melbourne-based Rubik’s Collective. She has received concert commissions for many leading ensembles, including The Australia Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Ironwood, The Song Company, Decibel, and the Australia Piano Quartet. Her compositions have been selected for international festivals including: TURN UP Festival, Arizona (2021); Philadelphia Orchestra’s ‘WomenNOW’ program (2020); Sydney Festival (2019; 2020), Canberra International Music Festival (2017; 2019), and Vivid Sydney (2014). Her album of collected chamber works, Uncovered Ground (Move 2021) received high praise, including two 5-star reviews, and was named ‘pick of the week’ by The Sydney Morning Herald.

Felicity is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound Design at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her scholarly publications are in the area of music for multimedia and gender in music; she edited the first book on the screen music of female-identifying composers, Women’s Music for the Screen – Diverse Narratives in Sound, published in 2022 with Routledge, New York.