Jennifer Fowler
Jennifer Fowler’s Threaded Stars for solo harp treats tempo and rhythm as star patterns. Quiet reflectiveness alternates with glassy swirls and trills, motifs that stream outward and pull the surrounding notes into their field.
Born in Bunbury and long based in London as a freelance composer, she writes chamber and solo music in which pattern and pacing do the expressive work. Threaded Stars 2 extends the earlier harp piece into a longer span of linked motifs rather than a conventional narrative, almost fantasia-like in its shifts between stillness and glitter. On disc the writing sits among other Australian solo-harp scores as colouristic without being programmatic: the stars are the figures themselves, not a story laid over them.
Compositions by Jennifer Fowler appear on
Awakening
Marshall McGuire is a formidable asset to Australia’s contemporary music scene, and the only harpist specialising in both baroque harp and all forms of modern music. This Tall Poppies disc remains a catalogue best-seller.