Aviva Endean

Aviva Endean is a clarinettist, composer, sound artist and performance maker dedicated to connecting people with each other and their environment through attentive listening. She regularly works across a range of contexts including experimental and improvised music, new chamber music and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Endean’s work seeks to extend beyond the boundaries of her art form and to reimagine the possibilities of sound. She has collaborated with some of Australia’s most respected arts organisations including the Australian Art Orchestra, Room40, Chamber Made, Tura and Chunky Move, and was the recipient of the Freedman Music Fellowship (2015), the APRA/AMCOS Art Music Award (2020/2023), a Green Room Award (best composition for dance 2019) and the Peggy Glanville-Hicks composer’s residency (2021).

As a composer and performance maker, Aviva often explores expanding the audience experience of sound by creating unusual, spatially engaged and participatory contexts for listening. Her recent original work in this area include “Stranger”, a performance installation for an ensemble audience (nominated for a Green Room Award contemporary and experimental performance), “Vibrato Virtual”, a participatory sound work using mobile phone speakers (Chamber made/Liquid Architecture), “Ping Pong Pop”, a game piece for live spinning contrabass clarinet player, audience and ping pong balls (Dark Mofo), and “Sonic Labyrinth”, an immersive and interactive sound journey for children and adults alike (Castlemaine State Festival/Art Play).

Her current ensembles include Hand to Earth, an improvising band featuring Yolŋu songkeepers Daniel and David Wilfred (voice/yidaki), Korean born singer Sunny Kim and Peter Knight (trumpet/electronics), and The Cloud Maker, a powerful line up of 6 female musicians who draw on stories of goddesses from their many shared heritages to create music which echoes these tales of creation, regeneration and transformation.

Endean’s staged works have been shown at Dark Mofo, Castlemaine State Festival, Mona Foma, Darwin Festival and Sydney Contemporary art fair, and she has toured her solo music internationally including Sound of Stockholm, Only Connect (Oslo), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Angelica (Bologna).