BIO

Jessica Lindsay Smith is a composer and sound artist based in regional Victoria on Dja Dja Wurrung land. She creates music that exalts the fluidity of genre and art form, and examines relationships; the relationships between people and their environments, between cellular structures of human bodies and their macro representation, between the artificial and the natural. Jessica creates music and sound with a focus on vivid colours and unusual sounds, writing music that is “poignant…and melancholic” (classikON).

Last year Jessica participated in Ensemble Offspring’s Hatched Composer Intensive, mentored by the ensemble and Damien Ricketson, writing Supernovæ. Jessica’s opera, ESOTERIC for large improvising ensemble, was created and staged in collaboration with visual artist Rachael Archibald and choreographer Arabella Frahn-Starkie (supported by Creative Australia). ESOTERIC is an experimental opera in one act that draws together visual art, choreography, contemporary art music, and improvisation.

Jessica has written for Ensemble Goldentree, The Melbourne Women’s Choir, Luciano Tristaino and Gisbert Watty (Italy), and Melbourne University Big Band, amongst others. Jessica recently participated in the Expanding Fields of Practice Program run by the Australian Art Orchestra in collaboration with Punctum. Jessica has been a participant of the Tilde New Music and Sound Art Academy (2017) under the instruction of Liza Lim and Chris Dench, Australian Art Orchestra Mentorship (2020) mentored by Aviva Endean, and the Melbourne Music Analysis Summer School (2016).

In 2016 Jessica was awarded an IgniteLab grant through the University of Melbourne to create a curated concert of works that crossed the classical and jazz streams with celebrated pianists Luke Howard and Nat Bartsch. In the same year Jessica curated and had her work performed at 'Composure: Chroma Collective', a concert at Arts Centre Melbourne supported by The Channel.

Jessica holds a Bachelor of Music from Monash University and a Bachelor of Music (Honours) from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music studying under Miriama Young, Mary Finsterer, Jonathan Dreyfus, and Thomas Reiner, amongst others. Jessica’s interests span from intricately written chamber music to largely improvised jazz, from film music to installation soundscapes. The common thread being a search for novel colour palettes and an intrigue for curious textures.

Jessica acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land where she works and lives, the Dja Dja Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and pays her respects to First Nations Elders past, present and emerging. She is privileged to create on land that has been home to music for the entirity of human history.