Stephanie Nicholls 22/3/26 Stephanie Nicholls 22/3/26

Inside the Programme

Mirabilis Collective's Artistic Director Stephanie Nicholls goes behind the scenes of programming Hear Her Now Festival — fifteen events, one hundred works by women composers, four world premieres, and more music than she can fit in.

I love programming. I mean it — it's one of my favourite parts of being Artistic Director with Mirabilis Collective. So when I tell you I'm counting down to Easter so I can spend a chunk of it with a spreadsheet and a pile of recordings, please understand that is not a cry for help.

Hear Her Now has a goal: one hundred works by women composers across fifteen events. I'm about halfway through the programming now, and what strikes me most is how different the reality has been from what I expected.

Everyone assumes the hard part is finding the music. What I've actually found is that I can't fit everything in. I keep finding amazing composers, getting excited about their works, discovering three or four pieces I'd dearly love to programme — and then having to choose one, knowing the others will have to wait for next time. That kind of decision takes care and thought, and it happens again and again across fifteen performances

One hundred works by women composers turns out to look a lot like any serious curatorial challenge: rich material, finite space, and the constant, slightly bittersweet work of choosing.

The festival spans early music to brand new Australian commissions, sacred music to contemporary song, art song through the ages to a dedicated concert celebrating LGBTQI+ composers and songwriters. There's a standalone concert drawn entirely from the AMEB syllabus, pop-up performances by UWA Conservatorium students and community musicians, and an opening concert devoted to West Australian women composers — including world premieres of newly commissioned works by Katherine Potter and Mia Brine. Across the festival, Julia Nicholls and Rose Russell also premiere new commissions. Four world premieres in a single festival. I'm still slightly pinching myself about that.

Something else I've been quietly thrilled about is Open Stage — a really important event we're developing across the whole festival.

Community musicians come into the room with us, work alongside Mirabilis Collective musicians in workshops and rehearsals, and perform music by women composers as part of the festival itself. Their contribution sits at the heart of the hundred works, as genuine festival performers.

What I love about this is that it sits somewhere genuinely different from a masterclass or a community concert. Participants are making music with us, working through repertoire by women composers, building ensemble skills through the doing of it. The knowledge transfer happens in the rehearsal room, and it's the kind that sticks — because it's experiential, relational, and the evidence on participatory music is unambiguous about that.

Most community musicians in WA have spent their entire musical lives in ensembles where music by women composers was simply absent from the repertoire placed in front of them. Open Stage puts it directly in their hands. And then they take it home to their choirs, their school orchestras, their chamber groups. That's the part that genuinely excites me.

For now, the Easter spreadsheet awaits. I cannot wait.

Join us for the launch of Hear Her Now on Sunday 12 April at 3:30pm at the Wigmore Studio, UWA Conservatorium of Music. Enjoy festival previews, short performances by Mirabilis Collective, refreshments, and a first glimpse of Australia’s first chamber music festival devoted entirely to music by women.

https://events.humanitix.com/hear-her-now

About the Author
Stephanie Nicholls is the Artistic Director and founder of Mirabilis Collective, an oboist, pianist, and advocate for women in music. She founded the ensemble in 2022 to champion works by women composers and mentor young women musicians entering the profession.