Motivated by Music
Georgia SCOTT (2010) Old Girl Georgia Scott is an Australian Composer, Orchestrator and Arranger, having studied at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music and The Royal College of Music in London. Not only is Georgia a talented musician, but she is also a passionate advocate for equality in the music industry and offers SPAN News readers worthwhile advice for launching a music career.
12
What have you been up to since graduating from SCEGGS in 2010? After graduating from SCEGGS, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to move to the UK to study for my Bachelor’s in Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. I really enjoyed having the chance to soak up such a diverse and accessible music scene. It was fantastic to have Europe so close by and have the chance to explore the rich cultural and musical history of many different countries. I returned to Australia in 2016 after finishing my undergraduate degree and then began a Master’s in Speech Pathology which was another area close to my heart and this began my journey to feeling comfortable with my identity as someone living with a disability. In 2018, I then had the opportunity to study for a master’s degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and be part of their Composing Women Program. This is a two-year professional development program that runs alongside their postgraduate courses to foster four early-career composers and aims to change the genderimbalanced programming in the music industry. As part of this program, I was fortunate to work with some fantastic orchestras and musicians both in Australia and internationally, and the program gave me the chance to solidify my compositional voice and think about the messages that I wanted audience members to engage with through my work. I also took this opportunity to explore the representation of women with disability in music and researching this really opened my eyes to the inequality faced by artists with disability on a systemic level. Do you have a favourite piece of music that you have composed? I don’t know about a favourite piece of music, but there are a couple of pieces I have particularly enjoyed writing. I was fortunate to be commissioned by The Australian Ballet to write the score for a piece called Placeless as part of their ‘Bodytorque. Digital’ program. The writing process can often be quite isolating for composers, so I really cherished the interdisciplinary collaboration between choreographer and composer. I am very grateful
