David Young was the Artistic Director of Aphids since co-founding the company in 1994. In 2010 he took up the Artistic Directorship of Chamber Made Opera, and will remain involved with Aphids as Artistic Advisor.
David Young is part of constellation in Melbourne.
David composes for and co-curates cross-artform projects. These have included curating the Aphids Reel Music Festival which also featured the premiere of Waiting To Turn Into Puzzles, a music/film work with Louise Curham, performed by Ensemble Offspring. Schallmachine 06 & 07 took place in Melbourne and Basel, with percussionist Fritz Hauser and architect Boa Baumann. Other collaborative projects include Ricefields, an electro-acoustic installation/performance which toured Australia, France and Japan; Radio 1, percussion/theatre event featuring the world premiere live performance of Beckett’s radio play of the same name; Maps, a music theatre film text collaboration between Aphids and its sister company in Denmark with performances in Melbourne (November 2000) and Copenhagen (October 2002); and Music at Mt Egerton in an old clay mine in regional Victoria, Australia.
In 2005, the multimedia work Skin Quartet toured to four continents: Sydney, the USA, Belgium and South Africa. David composed and produced for multimedia artist Matthew Gardiner’s Oribotics since 2005. David has also worked frequently with Eugene Ughetti and Speak Percussion. The Libra ensemble and Aphids collaborated on the acclaimed presentation of his song cycle, Thousands of Bundled Straw, which was performed as part of the new Melbourne Recital Centre's opening festival in February 2009.
Early in 2004, David undertook an Asialink residency in Indonesia with W. S. Rendra’s Bengkel Theater. He led the Aphids residency at the MUSiCLAB program at Bains::Connective, a socio-artistic laboratory based in an art deco, disused, indoor swimming pool in the Moroccan quarter of Brussels. David then produced the acclaimed production of A Quarreling Pair at La Mama as part of the 2004 Melbourne International Arts Festival, which has gone to have three subsequent sellout seasons.
In 2000 David curated music for Ice Carving as part of the Melbourne Festival, and the following year created the miniature opera and sound installation Overheard at Inveresk for Ten Days on the Island. In 2002 he was festival director of Next Wave, Melbourne’s multi-artform festival which showcased new work by over 600 young artists.
David’s music is performed in Australia, Europe and Asia, in contexts ranging from concerts to music theatre and installation. As a composer he is preoccupied with exploring the relationship between sound and image, employing intricate and often miniature formats in unconventional settings. The music has been variously described as ‘musical origami’, ‘accessible, yet satisfyingly abstract’ and ‘quietly determined to be itself … an aural equivalent of seeing a world in a grain of sand’.
David has been commissioned by ensembles and musicians including the Libra Ensemble (Melbourne), Elision (Brisbane), Australian Youth Orchestra, Ives Ensemble (Amsterdam), Fritz Hauser (Basel), Yasutaka Hemmi (Shimane, Japan), Aequatuor (Zurich), Ensemble 21 (Denmark), Manufacture Ensemble (Tokyo), Ensemble Offspring (Sydney), Tosiya Suzuki (Tokyo), Geoffrey Morris (Melbourne) and others.
David completed his PhD in Composition at the University of Queensland. He is a board member of the New Music Network, RealTime Open City and co-founder of SoFA (Social Firms Australia Ltd).
