Intercultural Music Dialogue: Voice, Country & Deep Listening
Intercultural Music Dialogue: Voice, Country & Deep Listening
Performance Practice Development Series — Bridging Cultures Through Music
Date: Wednesday, 28 October 2026
Time: 4:00–5:15 PM
Venue: Recital Hall West, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney
Free Entry
Join multidisciplinary artist, composer, vocalist and poet Nicole Smede for the next lecture-recital in our Performance Practice Development Series — Bridging Cultures Through Music.
Working across sound, voice, poetry and installation, Nicole’s practice explores the relationships between Country, language and memory, guided by ancestral knowledge. Through composition, field recordings, spoken word and voice, her work invites us to consider listening not simply as a musical skill, but as a way of connecting — with place, story, culture and one another.
Through live performance, demonstration and conversation, this lecture-recital will explore:
Voice, Language & Story — How voice and language can carry memory, cultural knowledge and connections to Country.
Country & Sonic Practice — Exploring relationships between place, environmental sound, field recording and musical composition.
Deep Listening & Performance — Considering listening as an active creative practice, and how attention to breath, silence, resonance and environment can reshape the ways musicians perform and create.
Moving between contemporary composition, poetry, soundscape and vocal practice, the session opens a broader conversation around how musical practice can become a space for cultural connection, listening and exchange.
About the Artist
Nicole Smede is a Warrimay and cross-cultural multidisciplinary artist based on Wadi Wadi Dharawal Country. Working across sound, voice, poetry and installation, her practice explores the interrelationship between land, language and memory, guided by ancestral knowledge. Her work brings together field recordings, voice, instrumental composition and spoken word to create immersive sonic and poetic environments.
A graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Nicole trained in vocal performance and has worked across classical, experimental and contemporary music, film, poetry and sound art. Organisations and ensembles have commissioned her compositions, including the Canberra International Music Festival, Ensemble Offspring, and River City Voices, and her voice has appeared on award-winning film and television soundtracks, including Goldstone and Black Cockatoo Crisis.
Her recent compositional practice includes works that bring together voice, field recordings, text, visual material, and environmental sound. Her 2026 work The Grassening – Breath Returns, for example, creates a sonic dialogue between performer and ecosystem using field recordings and plant signals from Lowland Grassy Woodland on Wodi Wodi Dharawal Country.
Nicole is also a member of Mudjingaal Yangamba, an intergenerational South Coast Koori women’s choir dedicated to revitalising language and sharing cultural knowledge and personal stories through song.
Students, staff, musicians, researchers and members of the wider community are warmly invited to attend.
Curator: Dr Lu Liu - Discipline Lead, Intercultural Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Facilitator: Dr Karen Cummings - Dr Karen Cummings — Vocal Studies, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Research Assistant: Yun Zhou - Project Support, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
The Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Intercultural Music Program is generously supported by Paolo Hooke and Fan Guo.