Dale Cornelius

Late one night in Montalcino, Tuscany, Dale Cornelius heard a howling wind inside a cathedral, and a metal door somewhere deep within the building, caught and thrown by it. He stepped in. There was no one there. The sound grew louder, and he recorded it. That sound became the provocation for his album What is Carried, What is Left Behind?: the wind as a carrier of the literal dust of our mortality, and of invisible things. What do we carry without choosing to? What do we try to leave behind, and what trails in our wake regardless? The result is a six-part narrative chamber cycle for string quartet, synthesizers, piano, tape loops and found sound, recorded in Melbourne with Eclective Strings. Five of the pieces are new. The sixth, A Whispered Dawn (Spencer's Lullaby), was written in 1999 while his first-born son was in neonatal intensive care, and is recorded here for the first time. An AACTA and Australian Screen Music Award-winning composer, Dale has scored more than 90 productions, from the tender, off-kilter warmth of Mary & Max to the nocturnal menace of Backtrack and the giant-screen scale of IMAX. His credits also include Blinky Bill: The Movie, five seasons of The Doctor Blake Mysteries for BBC One and ABC, and Australia's pavilions at the World Expos in Shanghai and Aichi.