Abstract
A full concert-length improvisation – composition in real time – based around an early virtuoso work, Dance of Redeemed Creation, and performed in the reverberant but clear acoustic of St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne. The work investigates whether the structural instincts developed through the researcher’s composed output (murmuration technique, polyphonic layering, rule-based processes) manifest coherently in unscripted, real-time performance. The cathedral acoustic becomes an active compositional partner: reverberation times force the improviser to compose with the resonant decay of each gesture, generating knowledge about the relationship between architectural space and spontaneous musical decision-making. The concert-length duration (c.45 minutes) tests sustained individual performer improvisatory coherence at a scale where architectural structure must emerge – not merely local textural interest – demonstrating that deep compositional training can generate large-scale formal logic in real time.