CAT HOPE

Cat Hope’s music is conceptually driven, using mostly graphic scores, acoustic/electronic combinations and new score reading technologies. It often features aleatoric elements, drone, noise, glissandi and an ongoing fascination with low-frequency sound.

Cat’s composed music ranges from works for laptop duet to orchestra, with a focus on chamber works, and in 2013 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to develop her work, as well as Civitella Ranieri (Italy) and Visby International Composers residency (Sweden) fellowships. Her practice has been discussed in books such as Sonic Writing (Magnusson, 2019), Loading the Silence (Kouvaris, 2013), Women of Note (Appleby, 2012), Sounding Postmodernism (Bennett, 2011), as well as periodicals such as Gramophone UK, The Wire, Limelight and Neu Zeitschrift Fur Musik Shaft. Her works have been recorded for Australian, German and Austrian national radio, and her work has been awarded a range of prizes including the APRA|AMC Award for Excellence in Experimental Music in 2011, 2014 and the Peggy Glanville Hicks residency.

She has founded a number of groups, most recently Decibel new music ensemble, noise improv duos Candied Limbs, HzHzHz, Super Luminum, as well as multi bass projects Abe Sada and Australian Bass Orchestra. She has also founded and written pop songs for Gata Negra (1999–2006) and has an active solo bass noise practice, which has seen her collaborate with KK Null, Whitehouse, Acid Mother Temple, Merzbow and many more. She maintains an active profile as a flute performer, recently premiering a new work written for her on alto flute by French composer Eliane Radigue (OCCAM XXVI, 2018).
“one of Australia’s most exciting and individual creative voices…a remarkable composer.” Gramaphone Magazine UK, 2017.

“dense yet airy, seemingly endless streams of sound …exquisite listening pleasure of fleeting descending sound streams” Gerardo Scheige, Neue Zeitschrift for Musik, 2018. 
“one of the most important voices of modern Australian music” Thomas Meyer, JazzNMore, 2017.
” a magical sonic world of considerable expressive depth” Lisa MacKinney, 2014
“a superstar of Australian new music”  Alex Turley, Realtime, 2016
“Intense and dramatic” Chris Reid, Realtime, 2017
“highly successful musical innovation” Chris Reid, Realtime, 2017
“… of the five works on the program, composer Cat Hope was the most successful…she shows that “new music” can be both accessible and relevant.” Joephine Giles, Aussie Theatre, July 2012.
“… work of great psychological and theatrical impact” Chris Reid, Realtime, 2011.

Cat Hope is currently Professor of Music at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, where she is Head of Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music.