A very loyal audience braved the inclement Sydney weather on Tuesday 4 June to join the Australia Ensemble for a free lunchtime concert in the Tyree Room of UNSW's John Niland Scientia Building.

Between Frank Martin's Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaise and Crusell's delightful Clarinet Quartet Op.2 no.1 was an extra treat, the premiere performance of a new work by the inaugural Layton Emerging Composer Fellow, Nicole Murphy.

Murphy had herself braved the weather to fly from her hometown of Brisbane for the performance, a short work for clarinet and piano entitled Exchange, performed by David Griffiths (clarinet) and Ian Munro (piano).

She explained, “I was struck by the similarities in language used to describe marketing systems in his work - many descriptive sentences could have been taken directly from a review of a piece of music. I wanted to honour Professor Layton’s expansive body of work in the field of marketing, and his generous contribution to the creation of new knowledge in the field of composition, through this piece”.

Happily, Professor Roger Layton and his daughter Gretel were able to be there for the performance, hearing his own research come to life through music for the very first time.

Congratulations to Nicole for her new work, which we hope finds and creates many more opportunities for her, a deserving winner of the 2018 Layton Emerging Composer Fellowship.