Georgina Palmer: Emerging Composer

Music composition is a rather niche field to be pursuing at a tertiary level, and one that a lot of people outside of the music world don’t know a lot about. Yet here I am in my third year of studying it, considering what my next steps in the industry may be.

Furthermore, as a young female composer from New Zealand (and studying in Melbourne, Australia) I’m part of a very small demographic and, for a long time, thought that I was pretty much the only young composer in the world.

As I’ve grown with my music and begun building up my portfolio of work, I’ve learnt more about what the modern music world is like and what areas within it I would like to delve into, so here is a small insight into what that world looks like (from my perspective).

Over the past four years, I’ve had over a dozenof my compositions professionally recorded (and I feature in several of these myself, playing either piano or percussion), along with a number of my scores being published online. I have a website, a YouTube channel and a mailing list, all of which get updated regularly.

Of course, learning how to navigate the vast, often dangerous online world has been quite a journey, but one that I’m very glad to have taken; two years ago, an orchestra director in Indiana (USA) reached out to me on Facebook stating that she had found one of my string orchestra works online and that her orchestra would like to perform it at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The piece in question was written for my belovedgrandparents, Joan and David Palmer, and entitled “Upon Clee Hill”.

Among my many other precious composing memories is my time spent in Queenstown (NZ) for the 2023 At The World’s Edge Classical Music Festival, where I was the Emerging (junior) Composer in Residence. I wrote a work for French horn, violin and cello called “Maramataka” (which is essentially the Māori word for ‘moon phases’) and had the privilege of sharing the work not only with a number of paying audiences in a variety of beautiful venues, but also thousands of local schoolchildren in the district, many of them witnessing classical music for the first time through performances of my work.

For the past few months, I have taken my involvement with music in a different direction on Tuesday evenings, when I have been interning at Melbourne’s classical music radio station, 3MBS. Learning about the administration side of music and the inner- workings of a 24/7- broadcasting radio station has been incredibly insightful, and something I’ve enjoyed more than I expected to.

A few weeks into my internship, I ended up getting interviewed on-air during the station’s “young local talent” hour, which was also a lot of fun. I did a similar interview with Radio New Zealand in June this year as well.

I think, as both a young composer and a young person generally, trying to get ‘as many strings to my bow’ as I can within my chosen field is the best way I can make the most of the short amount of time I have left at university.

The music industry is a much broader world than people realise (including myself!) and pursuing extra opportunities such as classical radio broadcasting, online music distribution and artist residencies will hopefully set me up for a varied and enriching career when I finish my studies. In the future, I would love to write music for film and television (and have already done some work in this area, scoring student film projects), and become more involved in the evolving industry of music for media.