Fantasia No. 7
for double bass
Composed for Ken Harris
First performance: 14 May 2022
Performed at the ANAM Set Festival by
Ken Harris (double bass)
This ANAM Set commission was generously supported by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative
Program note:
This double bass solo is titled Fantasia due to the nature of its free and improvisatory construction. The manipulation of small musical cells and their sudden juxtapositions form the modus operandi of this work.
About the composer:
Elizabeth Younan (b. 1994) is widely recognised as one of Australia’s finest young composers. Her violin solo, …your heart dreams of spring is featured on Jennifer Koh’s 2022 GRAMMY award-winning album, Alone Together. She is a composer for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 50 Fanfares Project and has composed for principal players of the Philadelphia Orchestra as part of their Our City, Your Orchestra series. Accolades include a Daniel W. Dietrich II Young Alumni Fund Award from the Curtis Institute of Music, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Layton Emerging Composer Fellowship, the Watermark Composition Prize from the Kendall National Violin Competition, the Fine Music 102.5 Willoughby Symphony Young Composer Award, and the Jean Bogan Youth Prize.
Elizabeth is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts at New York’s Juilliard School on a full-tuition scholarship as a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow, studying with Dr. Amy Beth Kirsten. In 2024, she was awarded an Australian Universities’ John Monash Scholarship from the General Sir John Monash Foundation, which supports outstanding Australians undertaking postgraduate study overseas. Elizabeth holds a BMus with First Class Honours and MMus from The Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she studied with Carl Vine AO as a recipient of the Australian Postgraduate Award. Elizabeth then graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where all students attend on full-tuition scholarships. She studied with Dr. Jennifer Higdon, Dr. David Serkin Ludwig, and Dr. Richard Danielpour—becoming the first Australian composer ever admitted to Curtis in its then nearly 100-year history.
More info: https://elizabethyounan.com/