Aaron Wyatt is a proud Noongar man from Perth, Western Australia. Aaron is an accomplished violinist, composer, conductor, researcher and assistant lecturer in Classical Music (Viola) at The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University. Aaron joined Monash in 2018 and is a PhD Candidate with his thesis on Animated Graphic Notation on the iPad: The Decibel ScorePlayer. He has performed in many highly successful and notable orchestras such as the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, including the award winning City of Shadows, which went on to perform seasons in New York and Melbourne, and Barking Gecko's critically acclaimed production of Duck Death and the Tulip. He has been the musical director of the South Side Symphony Orchestra, conductor with the Allegri Chamber Orchestra, and conducted the initial workshop in Adelaide of Professor Cat Hope’s opera ‘Speechless’. He has also worked and toured with the Decibel New Music Ensemble, both as a player and as a programmer of the group’s animated graphic notation software for the iPad.

What are the particular experiences in your career that have been most impactful? 

There’s a few, in particular, when I have conducted a lot of new operas that are in Indigenous languages. So that's been a really exciting and massive highlight. ‘Pawang’ was the first Indigenous opera I was involved in. I played in it for the first time online during the pandemic and then last year I conducted the live premiere event. There’s also been ‘Koolbardi wer Wardong’ and ‘Wundig wer Wilura’ which were hugely significant because it was made of an entirely Indigenous cast, with Noongar language and Noongar composers, Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse. I was the conductor working alongside a full Indigenous cast, it was really quite groundbreaking and definitely a first.

On top of that, are my own compositions. I'm starting to do a lot more and I keep getting asked to write more pieces. I’m currently writing a piece for the Monash Academy Orchestra for their August season, so that will be a pretty big one as well. Of course, things like the Wazoo season launch was a massive achievement as I conducted my own piece. Even just becoming the first Indigenous conductor to conduct one of the State Symphony Orchestras in concert has been a big highlight as well. Most of my highlights are not necessarily in the traditional research side of things, because that's mostly just writing about Decibel ScorePlayer and just the standard sort of papers but the real highlights have been in the non-traditional research sort of areas.

What is your current research?

My research is centred around my PhD. It involves developing and coding additional elements for an iPad app called the Decibel ScorePlayer. The app creates an animated graphic notation to coordinate the reading of scores for performances. Simply, it’s a way of representing music of rhythm or pulse which does not fit into traditional notation. It allows musicians to think about music in different ways but not replace the existing way of notation. So as an ensemble plays, there’s gradual movements of lines illustrating long notes with each instrument being very specifically coordinated.

This way of illustrating this notation is difficult to capture with traditional notation. The app is made to capture and coordinate these notations by the movement of lines so that during performances, the notation scrolls along to keep everyone in time. My PhD work involves adding further enhancements to the app with new ways of animating and refining how user friendly it is. One thing that I'm doing at the moment is combining animated notation with more traditional notation that appears on the screen for set periods of time.

Can you provide your background and expertise in the field?

I have been regularly part of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra for just over a decade before I moved to Melbourne to take up this role here. I've also done a lot of freelance work, playing in all sorts of ensembles and conducting. Most notably, the Decibel New Music Ensemble with Professor Cat Hope, who was previously the Head of Music at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University and is the Artistic Director of the Ensemble. From that, I started going on a number of tours across Europe and Japan.

And there's a potential US tour coming up later on down the track. Playing in the New Music Ensemble is related to the PhD work that I am doing with animated graphic notation and experimental music. When I was living in Perth, I was working mostly in schools and communities. Now having moved to Melbourne, it's becoming more professional but even back in Perth, I was conducting. I conducted the premiere of Professor Cat Hope's opera ‘Speechless’ as part of the Perth International Arts Festival and I was nominated for the Helpmann Awards in the category of 'Best Music Direction' in 2019. And that was my first big professional conducting project I have been part of.

Article published in 2024