Annika Moses 2016
Singer/Songwriter/ Musician | Awarded $9,000
Eighteen-year-old natural-born creative Annika Moses has won the $9000 Robert Juniper Award for the Arts for 2016. The Award, presented annually by the Mundaring Bicentennial Scholarship Trust, will enable this young musician to bring an ambitious project to life at the Mundaring Arts Centre from the beginning of July this year.
Studying for a Bachelor of Music at WAAPA, Moses’ diversity shows itself in her many genres of composition; folk, indie, ballad, soul. Recently finding an interest in spatial music; a genre that pre-dates digital and which works by projecting sound through more than one source. After witnessing a presentation by experimental music composer Aviva Endean, Moses was inspired to present music accessibly through a sound installation and developed the project proposal that won her the latest award.
Moses described spatial sound as music presented in a way not unlike a surround sound system and equally possible through live presentation by positioning musicians in different areas of a room. “I want to try something I haven’t done before: using a space as the main prompt for the music.” she said.
She approached visual artist Shannon Lyons, who became her partner in the project which is titled “Five Point One and a Piece of Four by Two”. Moses said the idea is to build a space – a sound scape – the audience can walk through and experience the transparency of art, almost subliminally. The working title focuses on the ‘tools’ used by the two artists to create and present art, with Moses gathering sounds for the installation with a portable recorder and Lyons creating the ‘scape’.
In the meantime, the young musician has managed, produced and performed the equally ambitious Fringe World production ‘The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast’ – a music-poetry performance of the 1975 studio album, inspired by the illustrated children’s book of the same name.
Growing up in Gidgegannup, where she lived until recently, the Hills talent attended the local primary school and then Helena College in Glen Forrest. Music is clearly in her genes – her father sings and plays guitar – and at the tender age of six Moses started piano lessons. By nine she was writing her own songs, and recalls her teacher, Heather Luke, helping her score the music and write lyrics for a song about zebras. “By the end of primary school I was composing contemporary folk songs, performing my own music and making some recordings,” she said. “I also took up the guitar and mandolin.”
Her musicality flourished at high school and studying music at University, she said, had opened her mind to many new ideas. In her first year at WAAPA, encouraged to write a music score, Moses collected a $500 excellence award for music composition from a TV company. She believes a willingness to embrace new music styles has added to her versatility as a musician and complemented an early love of writing and performing folk songs.
Moses performs locally, pitching her music to a broader audience and discovering a new world of sound, one that is bringing her recognition and reward.
Find out more about Annika Moses on her WEBSITE.