Fantasia for Oboe and Piano
for oboe and piano
Composed for Joshua Webster
Commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) as part The ANAM Set 2025 and written for Joshua Webster, with its world premiere during ANAM’s 2025 recital season at the Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne.
This ANAM Set commission was generously supported by the Anthony and Sharon Lee Foundation
Program note:
Fantasia for Oboe and Piano is written for oboist Joshua Webster, inspired by his love of astronomy. During 2020 and 2021 Joshua spent a lot of time at home in New Zealand looking through his telescope at the stars, and in particular the planets Jupiter and Saturn. This inspired a semi narrative for the work. Starting in a leaping fashion, as if trying to escape gravity’s pull, the piece moves to a slow-moving Earth melody before travelling to the grandeur of Jupiter, then finally spinning off into the depths of space.
The pitch material is all derived from the planets themselves.
About the composer:
May Lyon’s stylistically eclectic music explores humanistic themes from nature and lore to mathematics, with narrative dualities and rhythmic precision being strong recurring elements. Recently a finalist for Work of the Year: Dramatic for the ballet Precious Bedeviller, Lyon has been commissioned and performed by the Australian Ballet, Musica Viva, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Offspring, Sydney Dance Company, National Capital Orchestra, Forest Collective, and Syzygy Ensemble. In 2024 new 97min opera, Pieces of Margery, will have a concert premiere produced by More Than Opera in mid-year.
In August, Ensemble Offspring and soprano Jane Sheldon will premiere a short semi-theatrical work, Do Na Chaill, as part of the Noisy Women Commission. Lyon is currently undertaking a PhD at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as part of the 2020-21 Composing Women Program, supervised by Liza Lim.
Lyon was a finalist for the Beleura Emerging Composer Award as part of 2019 The Melbourne Prize, participant in the 2017 Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program, and winner of the 2009 Adolf Spivakovsky Scholarship for Composition. Their work has been featured on ABC Classic, 3MS Radio, and radio shows such as ABC Classics New Waves and Making Waves.