Towards the Edge of Google Maps (2023)
(for Viola and Piano)

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), for Sebastian Coyne as part The ANAM Set 2024. The premiere performance was given by Sebastian Coyne (viola) and Berta Brozgul (piano) on 22 November 2024 at Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne.