Asian-Australian interactions : personal compositional voice and after-resonance renewal

![CDATA[Chou Wen-chung asserts that for the revitalization of an individual's culture there needs to be a sense of cultural root in creativity that can receive creative input, and from this things grow and flourish. In my own music, as a composer of European heritage but born of Pacific environs, I see this root as an eclectic Australian attitude after the Sculthorpe tradition, but also incorporating a European technical sensibility. Equally important within this sense of cultural roots, is a sense of personal voice nourished by what Joji Yuasa calls a composer's cosmology - a broad personalized range of interests unique to the individual. In this sense I see the exact choices of an individual as creating a unique set of calues - a type of cultural DNA - that nurtures a composer's inner voice. It is my contention, that this personal voice in my own work is strengthened by a conscious and intuitive awareness of cultural and personal roots, and revitalized by cross-cultural engagement. My compositions Fierce Tranquility (2004) and After Resonance Blues (2005) draw on Hwang Byungi-ki's aftertone concept to create a growing emphasis in my work on sonic after-resonance. This creative renewal sits alongside established personal pitch-orientated gestures of a more European emphasis, although my music also assimilates momentary sounds/living-colour and sound-object influences of the East.]]