Composers & WorksStuart Greenbaum

Towards the Edge of Google Maps
for viola and piano
Composed for Sebastian Coyne

Performed as part of The ANAM Set 2024

This ANAM Set commission was generously supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia and the Anthony and Sharon Lee Foundation


Program note:

This duo for viola and piano is a musical response to a series of 6 digital drawings by Bulgarian artist Radina Stoïmenova. We were both in residence at the Akiyoshidai International Art Village in Japan in 2019. I returned to AIAV 4 years later in 2023 and started sketching this work. The drawings show abandoned places: dormant factories, halted construction, vehicles ditched at the sides of roads, broken power lines, unfinished fences, blackened trees. Elevated freeways pass over and around these sites and the navigation maps point toward areas of dense population; but the sites themselves are now dead-ends, devoid of people or activity. Yet palm trees flourish and there is space and potential for life and community. Stoïmenova looks beyond the purely social or economic meaning and explores how places remain in collective memory.

The duo was commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music (with assistance from Creative Australia), as part of The ANAM Set 2024. It was written for Sebastian Coyne.


About the composer:

The Stuart Greenbaum sound has overt connections to jazz, pop and minimalism but is equally grounded in the Western art music tradition.

“I hear music in time as a journey. Often this involves viewing our home planet Earth from a distance and considering our place in the universe. I gravitate toward remote and abandoned places on Earth or beyond as a metaphor. We can experience loneliness in the midst of a crowded room, yet also sense connection in extremely isolated places.

My music aims to evoke an atmosphere apart from the routine of modern life. I believe in the need to allow space in a world increasingly filled with commercialism, light and noise pollution and 24/7 thinking. At times, I think we lose a sense of wonderment at our Earthly surrounds. Therefore, when I write, I seek an experience in sound to take me beyond everyday imperatives.”

Having studied composition with Broadstock and Conyngham at the University of Melbourne, Stuart Greenbaum (he/him) holds a position at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music as Professor and Head of Composition. He is the author of over 230 works including 26 sonatas, 5 piano trios, 8 string quartets, 5 concertos, 5 symphonies and 2 operas.

Greenbaum’s music appears on 40 commercially released CDs notably including 10 releases dedicated solely to his output: A Trillion Miles of Darkness, Electric Confession, The Final Hour, The Thin Blue Line, Return Journey, Satellite Mapping, Mondrian Interiors, 800 Million Heartbeats, Mercurial and Music for Theatre.

For more about Stuart, visit his website: www.stuartgreenbaum.com/

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