Nirmali Fenn

Nirmali Fenn is a Sri Lankan-born Australian composer. She received her initial music education in Australia from the universities of New South Wales and Melbourne, graduating with high distinction. With the support of a prestigious Clarendon Fund Scholarship, she later read music at Oxford University, U.K. She has worked on the faculties of the University of Hong Kong, New York University, University of New South Wales and is currently based at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.

Nirmali’s music often involves a lot of theatre and she has collaborated with some of Asia’s most respected choreographers, such as Pun Siu Fai and Daniel Leung. Her collaboration with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company opened the 9th Guangdong Dance Festival in Guangzhou, China.

Nirmali has served as composer-in-residence at a number of major European festivals, most notably the Lakes District Summer Music Festival in the U.K. and the Saxophone Habanera Festival in Poitiers, France. Of the first performance of her song cycle Over Exposed at Abbaye Royaumont in Paris, Le Monde praised it as “standing out in the genre of ‘songs’ of today” and La Croix described it as “deeply moving”. Her compositions have been performed by the Arditti String Quartet, Ensemble Cairn, Ensemble Linea, the Kuss Quartet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tin Alley String Quartet, Sounds Underground, the Endymion Ensemble, the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Concorde, the S.E.M Ensemble and the Eastman Broadband Ensemble. Her music is published by Edition HH.

Through her music, Nirmali often challenges performers to ‘see’ with their ears and construct spatial ‘views’ of their surroundings. She believes that sound is one tool to give audiences the chance to experience the volume of the space in which they exist.

Nirmali Fenn’s tracks

• The Clash Of Icicles Against the Stars by Nirmali Fenn
• A Highwire Act by Nirmali Fenn
• Pókoj w Pokoju for STBB by Nirmali Fenn
• Metamorphosis for flute, clarinet, accordion, 2 violins by Nirmali Fenn
• Pokoj w Pokoju by Nirmali Fenn
• Scratches of the Wind for alto flute by Nirmali Fenn
• Through A Glass Darkly for trumpet, accordion, clarinet by Nirmali Fenn
• The Edge of Self for solo accordion by Nirmali Fenn
• The Ground of Being for flute and alto flute by Nirmali Fenn
• A Reaction In Force for solo oboe by Nirmali Fenn