2024

★★★★★ Music review: Dan Sultan x MSO, Hamer Hall (ArtsHub)

Turley says that in creating the orchestral arrangements, they ‘tried to do justice to the spirit of the original songs while also reimagining them in thoughtful, interesting ways’. They certainly showcased the best of Blackbird and allowed Sultan’s growth as an artist since its release and the talent of the MSO musicians to shine through.

Classic Live: Dan Sultan x MSO (ABC)

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of his ARIA-winning album 'Blackbird', the Arrente/Gurindji singer-songwriter and guitarist Dan Sultan has collaborated with the composer/arranger Alex Turley to present a unique concert with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

40 years of music and the Hoodoo Gurus still surprise audiences, announcing headline act in Symphony in the Park in 2024 (ABC)

Hoodoo Gurus frontman and songwriter, Dave Faulkner and the composer who is working on this project, Alex Turley joined ABC Canberra Drive's Anna Vidot to talk about how this unique collaboration came about. 

Hoodoo Gurus to headline Symphony in the Park in 2024 (ACT Gov Press Release)

It’s a great honour to be asked to be involved in a project like this. For me as the orchestrator I’m tasked with finding ways of expanding the musical world outside the four musicians of the Hoodoo Gurus, who will now have a 40-odd piece orchestra behind them. It’s about building the music into this cinematic, epic soundscape - allowing the two genres, rock plus the orchestral side, to fuse together and create something really new and exciting.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra returns to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in February 2024 (Australian Arts Review)

New music from emerging and diverse Australian voices tell the stories of our time (ABC)

2023

2024 ABC Composer Commissioning Fund artists announced (Limelight)

New Forrest Creative Fellows announced (UWA)

A rising star of contemporary classical music who graduated from The University of Western Australia was one of four artists to be awarded a prestigious Forrest Research Foundation Creative and Performance Leadership Fellowship.

“I believe that everyone has a right to enjoy and understand music and am committed to using my knowledge of the artform to advance this idea,” Mr Turley said. He said the project, Developing and implementing a method of ecological composition to represent Western Australian spaces, would explore connection to land, the role of humans in shaping the climate and the statehood of WA.

Alex Turley wins 2024 Layton Fellowship (Limelight)

Alex Turley’s effective and idiomatic writing for the gamut of orchestral instruments translated evocative concepts, such as breath and the refraction of light, into a focussed expression of musical ideas ranging from pulsating energy to contemplative stasis.

Review: Electric Fields + MSO (Limelight)

★★★★★ Ali McGregor and the MSO, Hamer Hall (ArtsHub)

With composition arranged by Alex Turley, the songs sung with passion, sensitivity and cheekiness defied easy categorisation. McGregor is fond of the hybrid and medley models, so many were a mash-up of not just her twin loves – cabaret and opera – but also a good dollop of 80s and 90s pop as well, as taken from her 2012 album, Alchemy.

MSO: Ali McGregor and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (Classic Melbourne)

Wonder, wind & water: Four Winds Festival 2023 (Limelight)

The MSO is about to premiere Alex Turley’s new composition at this 9pm concert (CutCommon)

How Conductors can help their audience feel “acknowledged and validated” (CutCommon)

When Alex Turley, the composer of River, sent me the score, I emailed him straight back saying: “I LOVE this piece. I can’t wait to bring it into the world”. River traverses so many different emotions and soundworlds, which isn’t surprising given it follows the path of a river through mountains, valleys, and waterfalls, and eventually to the sea. Alex really knows the instruments and how to combine them to make interesting sounds and colours.

Nothing will prepare you for how epic Genesis Owusu sounds with an orchestra (Triple J)

The orchestra go hard as fuck in this opening song, playing as though they're in the pit for a big, brassy Broadway show or recording the soundtrack for a Looney Tunes cartoon. Sinatra-esque horns combine beautifully with 70s disco strings in ‘WUTD’, which slides nicely into a somehow even classier version of ‘Waiting’ On Ya' than the one on his J Award winning album.

Hip-hop goes orchestral with Genesis Owusu (Limelight)

“For me, it’s about more than adding the odd orchestral flourish or decorating what’s already there,” Turley tells Limelight. “I want to get into the structure of a song and take it to a new place and that often means tweaking its architecture to add space for a solo or to showcase a certain instrumental part. But at the same time, you always have to keep the song and the artist at the centre of the experience.”

★★★★ Music Review: mosaics: Contemporary Sounds of Melbourne (ArtsHub)

The Sangam Ensemble’s collaborative work with MSO exuded thoughtfulness and sensitivity – delivering an emotionally powerful performance. The first movement contained an impossibly rich texture through beautifully meshing two musical traditions: Western and South Asian. It was utterly arresting, broadening one’s understanding of the capabilities of music in real time. Besides music, the Sangam Ensemble employed multiple art forms to depict their message to great effect.

2022

Review: Ex Machina (Omega Ensemble) (Limelight)

Two world premieres followed on the program; quite the feat for one performance, and from two acclaimed international composers, Christopher Cerrone and Nico Muhly, interspersed with a work by the exciting emerging talent, Alex Turley. Turley’s Zero Sum Game, commissioned by Omega Ensemble as part of its impressive CoLAB: Composer Accelerator Program in 2020, started boldly and virtuosically, blossoming into an exciting aural landscape. The “game” appeared to be the musical ideas being tossed from one musician to the next and back again, alternately driving and luxuriating; the young composer taking the compositional corners with ease.

★★★★ Concert review: Electric Fields + MSO (ArtsHub)

Alex Turley did a brilliant job of translating electro pop songs into full compositions and the orchestra, like the audience couldn’t help but be swept up in the energy of the moment.

A transformative collaboration at Bunjil Place (Limelight)

2021

Alex Turley wins 2021 Arcadia Winds Composition Prize (Limelight)

ANNOUNCED // Alex Turley wins the 2021 Arcadia Winds Composition Prize (CutCommon)

Turley’s work showed a strong command of the wind medium, and his compelling application was the unanimous choice

New Now (Omega Ensemble) (Limelight)

The concert ended on a lively and fun note with Turley’s Zero Sum Game , a challenge for the musicians to outdo each other in a vibrant riot of rapid bowing, crossed rhythms and the joyous sense of a cat chasing its own tail. In the slow middle part Jambazian’s piano has a gamelan-like quality before the crazy contest resumes to close the work.

Calling the Djomi spirits in new Indigenous-classical music collaboration, Barra-róddjiba (Limelight)

There will be lots of floating strings, to sound like water, and a central melody crafted to sound like the child spirits. In this Indigenous-classical collaboration conducted digitally between the keepers of the Djomi knowledge in Maningrida and composer Alex Turley in Melbourne, the women sent sound files of their singing, and Turley would send back recordings of suggested instruments. The clarinet was wrong, and the women loved the violin because the Djomi story was sad. But when the elders heard the oboe, central to a falling melody, they said: “That’s the one.”

Turley says “I’ve been given these stories and these melodies, and I’ve just seen my role as, I need to find a way to put an orchestra behind this, and to musically support this story. The way that I’ve done that is in the language that I know, which is traditional notated music.Then when you hear the piece live, there are elements of improvisation from the performers, and that all goes on top of this framework I’ve put together. I’ve tried to represent the picture of Maningrida that I’ve been told.”

Finalists for the 2021 APRA Professional Development Awards announced (Limelight)

ANAM names the 67 composers participating in The ANAM Set (Limelight)

Sydney Symphony Orchestra announces major new Australian music commissioning project (Limelight)