Work TBA
Composed for Caleb Goldsmith
Commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) as part of the ANAM Set 2027 and written for Caleb Goldsmith, to be premiered during ANAM’s 2027 recital season.
The 2027 ANAM Set commissions are supported by the Anthony and Sharon Lee Foundation.
About the composer:
Vanessa Perica is a multi–award-winning Australian composer and conductor, celebrated for her bold, emotionally charged writing. Based in Melbourne, she has emerged as one of the country’s most distinctive voices in contemporary jazz and classical composition.
A WAAPA graduate and Bob Wyllie Scholarship recipient, Vanessa’s 2020 debut album Love is a Temporary Madness became an instant critical success—topping the AIR charts, reaching No. 3 on the ARIA Jazz and Blues charts, and winning Best Jazz Album at the Music Victoria Awards.
Her collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra began in 2021 with the premiere of her Love is a Temporary Madness Symphonic Suite at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, followed by a gala performance at Hamer Hall for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.
Vanessa has since received both an APRA Art Music Award and an Australian Jazz Bell Award, as well as international honours from the Society of Composers Inc., who recognised her with consecutive Jazz Composition Awards. Her second album, The Eye is the First Circle (2023), earned an ARIA nomination, widespread acclaim, and was performed in Norway at the Vossa Jazz Festival with the Bergen Big Band under her direction.
In 2024 she won the APRA Professional Development Award, and in 2025 her Australian String Quartet commission No Feeling is Final toured nationally, hailed by critics as “stunning,” “a magnificent addition to quartet literature,” and “a revelation.”
In addition, 2025 has seen her awarded the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers Fundamental Freedoms Commission Prize, with the premiere presented in New York City by John Beasley’s Grammy Award-winning MONK’estra. Most recently, she was also named the winner of the prestigious Melbourne Prize for Music’s Beleura Emerging Composers Award.
Vanessa currently conducts the Australian Ministry of Sound Classical tour and is a proud Yamaha artist.
Vanessa is based in Melbourne / Naarm, VIC, lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation.
Website: https://www.vanessaperica.com
Instagram: @vanessa_perica
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanessapericamusic/
Twitter/X: @vanessa_perica
Photo credit: Rebecca Hitch, supplied by composer.