Live Performance: Leah Blankendaal

Book here

Join Student Composer in Residence, Leah Blankendaal, for a midday performance at the Grainger Museum that explores the patterns of domestic rituals through text, objects and new compositions.

Drawing on the writing of poet Ella Grainger, Leah blends string and electronic instruments into an intricate soundscape. The performance examines the intersection of domesticity necessity and the act of creation, holding this duality in all its messy complexity. This new work will question what happens when the experiences of women are no longer depicted through the gaze of others but are permitted the right to self-definition.

The Grainger Museum Student Composer in Residence program provides opportunities for current students of the Faculty of Music to create a new work in response to the themes and collections of the Grainger Museum. In 2027 the Residency builds on the installations created in the museum by Master of Art Curatorship students, in the exhibition Rethinking Grainger: New Perspectives from the Collection, and in particular the Gaze and her display.

About the Artist
Leah Blankendaal is an award-winning musician whose language is "kind, immersive and thoughtful,” and offers “us space to breathe and to be.” Composition collaborators include Quince Ensemble (USA), Duo Alterity (USA), Rubiks Collective (VIC), Luminescence Chamber Singers (ACT), Soundstream (SA) and Tura New Music and STRUT Dance (WA). She has received the ABC Classic Commissioning Fund, APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund, Peggy Glanville Hicks Commission, the Australian Music Centre Classical: Next Fellowship, and the 2025 Momentum Plus Orchestral Initiative 

Presented in collaboration with the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music.