CoLAB program nurtures Australia’s emerging composers
It may have started as a punchline, but Oliver John Cameron has successfully transformed an irreverent college chamber musical about Pauline Hanson into a serious career as a contemporary composer.
Ten years ago Cameron was the creator of: Color OrangeEight-part musical satire based on key moments of Hanson’s political journey. As the bill posters brazenly proclaimed: “One Woman. One Nation.”
This show coincidentally led to the Adelaide Fringe and the recent selection of Cameron as a “finishing school” for Australia’s next generation of composers. Omega Community – a contemporary chamber team – as the first recipient of Omega’s new Composer Accelerator Residency, in partnership with Hangin Trust, this June.
Now Cameron is developing a chamber piece that will serve as an unusual combination of pop and opera with a Eurovision twist. He hopes to take it abroad.
“It’s a study in an episode of reality television,” says Cameron. “The world’s biggest pop star is retiring but must choose his successor through a televised competition. It’s an episode of reality played out in opera form.”
Seeking a style that is both multi-modal and referential, Cameron’s music brings together unexpected topics and references everything: RuPaul’s Drag Race to Verdi Rigoletto.
Cameron oversees Omega’s first CoLAB workshop at Opera Australia for 2026; This year’s group of four composers benefits from the guidance of Matthew Hindson, associate dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The group is working on a composition by Beth Roche Lambton Worm – The film, a tribute to the legendary battle between a villager and a giant dragon, will be released in August.
Omega Ensemble founder and artistic director David Rowden says the program is designed to support musicians fresh out of conservatory who often find themselves “waiting for the phone to ring.” This is about preparing Australia’s leading composers for the future and ensuring they are given a sustainable pathway onto the global stage. “I wish we could have done more,” Rowden says ruefully.
Now in its sixth year, the initiative matches emerging talent with world-class mentors including Nico Muhly, Nigel Westlake, Missy Mazzoli and Elena Kats-Chernin. Ensemble Offspring also has a program for emerging composers.
Last year, Cameron and fellow composers Alexandra Mison, Cassie To and Callum O’Reilly fielded more than 100 applications for the Omega program, which was designed as a direct and structured response to historic challenges in cultivating new voices.
Omega said the success of its program was so evident and demand was so high that it would expand to Melbourne next year.
This year’s group – Roche, Robert McIntyre, Jessie Leov and Thomas Misson – are each developing a commission for Omega during their nine-month mentorship.
The program’s impact is seen in graduates like Melbourne-based Alex Turley, who was recently commissioned by the Grand Teton Music Festival.
“The opportunities that CoLAB helps create are akin to a graduate of Martin Scorsese’s national screenwriting program being chosen to write his next film,” says Michael Napthali, Omega’s newly appointed CEO.
“While we haven’t seen this happen in the movie yet, the equivalent is happening in music thanks to CoLAB.”
Napthali notes that even household names like Beethoven and Brahms once needed the support of patrons who believed in the capacity of the “new” to create something significant.
“For donors who are aware of the importance of the program, this is not a passive donation. It is participation in creation. Beethoven’s patrons did not know that they were signing immortality.”
Arts education is a key objective of federal arts minister Tony Burke’s review of national arts policy Revive; Tuesday’s budget points to non-government funding for Omega and others.
Hindson says composers learn more than just notation; They learn the psychology of cooperation. “There’s a big difference between sitting in front of a laptop and walking into a rehearsal room,” he says.
“While our universities do a fantastic job of training the next generation of composers, the icing on the cake for any composer is getting your music played by elite players like the Omega Ensemble. There really is nothing better for an emerging composer. This is where they learn the most. Books and other composers’ scores can only go so far. This is the real world.”
As for the inspiration that started it all, the real Pauline Hanson has never seen Cameron’s musical. “The conceit of the show was that Pauline took a while to arrive, so she was played by all the actors, eventually they all become Pauline,” says Cameron.
Even as he feels the urge to revisit the world of populist politics, he remains focused on his new opera. “I like to write many things at once,” he says. “That way they all talk to each other.”
Omega Community NEW NOW The showcase is at ACO on the Pier in Sydney on 14 August.
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