Echoes of Her: Music by Australian Female Composers

Echoes of Her is an intimate hour of new music by Australian female composers Jessica Wells and Anna Hirst Friedman, for bassoon, saxophone quartet and piano. It is the first of what Anna and Jessica hope will become an annual celebration of women's music.

On Tuesday, 8 December, the Goethe-Institut Sydney in Woollahra will host the first event. The music explores themes of love, loss, transcendence, connection, historical Australian women, and the joy of native flowers.

The music

Jessica Wells brings three works. Her suite for bassoon and piano opens with 100 Seconds to Midnight, moves through Falling Stars, a tribute to four women lost in recent years, whose memory is held in star-like high piano and a moving bassoon melody, and closes with Furiant, a fast Bohemian folk dance full of shifting accents, written in the frustration of lockdown. Portrait of Row, for saxophone quartet and piano, has a remarkable origin. 

It was commissioned by the Alfred Hospital for its telephone hold line, after Mark Green was struck by the hold music he heard while his wife Rowanne Brown was being treated there. The piece is a tribute to Rowanne and to the hospital's care for its patients and families. Sati, for soprano saxophone and piano, takes its name from the Sanskrit word for mindfulness and follows a wandering mind as it finds its way to calm.

Anna Hirst Friedman's Art of the Scott Sisters is a four-movement suite for saxophone quartet inspired by Harriet and Helena Scott, the sisters who defied the conventions of mid-19th-century Australia to collect and document specimens in the bush. Anna discovered them by chance in a small book in the Australian Museum gift shop, and felt compelled to tell their story in music. 

Her miniature works for bassoon and piano are musical "colouring pieces" based on Australian native flowers: the magnificent Flame Tree, the mysterious Pink Mulla Mulla, the playful Billy Buttons and the cascading Weeping Lilly Pilly.

Fading is a two-movement composition for solo piano about life transitions. It moves from a fast, energetic first movement with surges of frustration into a gentle, slow, and mysterious second movement that resolves in self-acceptance and love. The piece reflects the musical influences of Schubert and contemporary Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan.

The composers

Jessica Wells is one of Australia's most sought-after composers and orchestrators. She won the 2025 AACTA Award for Best Original Score in a Documentary for Mozart's Sister and received the 2024 Art Music Luminary Award (NSW). 

Her concert works range from solo harp to full symphony orchestra. Recent projects include a guzheng concerto for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and her first full-length ballet, Butterfly Effect, with West Australian Ballet. She also works as an orchestrator, arranger, producer and conductor across concerts, film, theatre and recordings.

Anna Hirst Friedman has forged a distinctive voice in classical composition since re-emerging in 2023. As a grant recipient and commissioned artist, she creates, produces, and directs her own works, which have been performed at prominent Sydney venues including the City Recital Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Bondi Pavilion.

Building on her previous premieres of two song cycles, Hirst Friedman recently composed a new choral piece for Chorus Ecclesiae.

Looking ahead to 2027, her upcoming portfolio features diverse cross-disciplinary commissions, including the opening theme for the Sydney Jewish Museum’s podcast series The Good Oy and a new collaborative dance piece for acclaimed artist Annalouise Paul.

She is currently seeking sponsorship to support the development of her latest major project, a new opera titled Hidden Light, which she has recently begun writing.

Event details

Tuesday 8 December 2026
Goethe-Institut, Woollahra
Doors 7pm for a 7:30pm start, concluding 8:30pm
Tickets $49

Join us for the beginning of something we hope will echo for years to come.