Aviva Endean

Aviva Endean is an artist dedicated to fostering a deep engagement with sound and music, with the hope that attentive listening can connect people with each other and their environment. Trained as a clarinetist, she works as a composer, improviser, curator and performance-maker, and creates unusual, spatially engaged, and participatory contexts for listening. Central to her practice is the gathering of artists and audiences into shared spaces for listening, opening our ears to the world around us as we consider place and space. Whilst deeply steeped in music, Aviva’s vision extends beyond her primary artform to expand ways in which sound can be experienced and understood, and to discover new forms of expression that reflect the here and now.

Aviva has developed a profile as a significant force in Australian contemporary music, initiating highly regarded collaborations and performance works. Always keen to create new connections, she collaborates widely with artists across cultures and disciplines, and curates contexts which empower those she collaborates with.

Aviva has toured her projects inter/nationally to major festivals. Current projects include: ‘Stranger’, a participatory sound installation for an ensemble audience (finalist: Art Music awards/Victorian Green Room awards 2023); ‘The Cloud Maker’ an ensemble featuring six culturally diverse female musicians (Winner: Art Music awards 2023); ‘Hand to Earth’ a band interweaving Yolŋu manikay (Aboriginal songlines) with contemporary improvisation (finalist: Songlines, ARIAs, Music Victoria, Art Music awards 2022); and her solo wind/electronics set, which has been presented inter/nationally including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Sound of Stockholm/FRIM (Sweden), Only Connect (NO) The Substation (VIC) and MONA FOMA (TAS).

Her debut solo album was released on Norwegian label SOFA in 2018 to critical acclaim, with reviews speaking to Aviva’s innovation and virtuosity, describing the work as ‘captivating, sophisticated, stunning, miraculous’ & ‘trance-inducing’. Her follow up electro-acoustic album released on Room40 in 2022 captured the imagination of listeners with its richly textured sound worlds; reviews claiming, ‘Endean has proven time and time again that she is an expert of the aural adventure’.

Aviva is also active as a collaborator on interdisciplinary projects and has composed for two Chunky Move productions - Token Armies (winner best sound design/composition for dance) and Rewards for the Tribe (RISING, Warwick Arts Centre, UK), Rebecca Jensen’s ‘SLIP’ for the Keir Choreographic award/FRAME festival, and contributed to the soundtrack for Angelica Mesiti’s ‘Assembly’ (Venice Biennale Australian Pavilion).

Aviva’s work has been recognised by numerous awards and opportunities including being the Peggy Glaville Hicks composer in residence (2021), APRA/AMCOS Art music award winner (2023 and 2020), the Associate Artist for Banff Musicians in residence (2019), and the inaugural recipient of the ‘Pathfinder’ associate artist position with Australian Art Orchestra- AAO (2018-19). She was winner of the Freedman Fellowship (2015) and a finalist for The Melbourne Prize (2019) as well as the Music Victoria Awards ‘Best Avant-garde/experimental act in 2013, 2018 and 2023.