Alex Chilvers is a Sydney-based composer, bass guitarist, and Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. With the Bark Tin Band and a growing circle of collaborators, his work explores dialogue between western classical, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and South Asian traditions across composition, performance, and pedagogy.
Photo by Grace Sui
Paolo Hooke speaks with Alex Chilvers, pipa player Lulu Liu, and harpsichordist Anthony Abouhamad about Bark Tin Band’s Tang Suite, its links to ancient pipa manuscripts from the Mogao Caves, and the ensemble’s intercultural approach to contemporary chamber music.
Alex Chilvers is a composer, bass guitarist, researcher, and Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, where he leads a suite of undergraduate and postgraduate aural units and supervises a broad range of research projects. His creative work explores intercultural collaboration and contemporary composition, drawing on diverse musical languages to create performance environments rooted in dialogue, reciprocity, and shared learning.
Alex co-founded the Bark Tin Band with pipa player Lulu Liu and has recently collaborated closely with musicians such as harpsichordist Anthony Abouhamad and percussionist Pirashanna Thevarajah. The band's debut record Tang Suite, a multi-movement work inspired by Dunhuang pipa manuscripts and Tang-era cultural mobility, was commissioned by the ABC and will be released in 2026.
As an educator and researcher, Alex is committed to transforming the Australian conservatory by engaging migrant musical expertise and fostering inclusive intercultural pedagogy. His writing addresses cultural mobility, institutional change, and practice-led research, with forthcoming chapters in volumes on music and cultural mobility.
Tang Suite is a multi-movement work for the unusual trio of pipa,
harpsichord and bass guitar, commissioned by ABC Classic and written for Bark Tin Band.
Inspired by the historic Silk Road city of Dunhuang, the piece engages closely with the
Dunhuang pipa pu manuscripts from the “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas”,
with each movement drawing on one or more of the twenty-five preserved pipa
melodies as a springboard for new intercultural dialogue.
Across five movements – Prelude, Shoegazing, Tilting Cups,
Interlude, and Agitato-tranquillo – the work explores contrasting
chronotopes of musical time, the exchange of notated and oral traditions, and
the different expressive worlds of the three instruments, composed in close
collaboration with Lulu Liu and Anthony Abouhamad.
The 2023 European Foundation for Chinese Music Research (CHIME) meeting brought together
musicians and researchers from across Europe, Asia,
America, and Australia, and featured live performances showcasing
instruments such as erhu, liuqin, and morin khuur,
a demonstration of Chinese shadow puppetry, and discussions on topics
including the Dai elephant-foot drum and Kunqu opera.
At the nearby Palace of Mafra, attendees viewed
a newly installed exhibition of Chinese musical instruments and listened
together to the bells of Mafra’s UNESCO World Heritage Listed carillon – an
instrument of immense scale with earth-rumbling bass notes and prominent
minor-third overtones. These experiences all contributed directly to this
work’s composition.
Chainwheel was commissioned by Heath Henn and Anthony Abouhamad, and
premiered at the Sydney Unitarian Church in June 2021.
A uniquely modern work for a unique historical instrument, it was conceived as a response to Mozart's
Sonata for four hands in B-flat major (KV 358). Small fragments from the
eighteenth-century work are subjected to a range of transformations to create a
large-scale, high-energy piece that draws on the full expressive range of the
double-manual harpsichord.
Alex's research examines how our cultural backgrounds influence our perception of music and how conservatories in Australia can become more dialogic and representative of the communities they serve, engaging migrant expertise and intercultural collaboration as catalysts for institutional change.
Much of this work is grounded in practice-led projects with the Bark Tin Band and other intercultural ensembles, combining creative output, curriculum design, and aural pedagogy to rethink how listening, analysis, and performance can host encounters between western classical, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and South Asian traditions.
A full list of publications and presentations is available on request.
Alex welcomes enquiries from performers, ensembles, festivals, academic institutions, and community organisations interested in new work, intercultural projects, aural skills teaching, or research collaboration.
Email: Available via the University of Sydney staff page .
Additional materials (CV, repertoire list, scores, and recordings) are available on request.
