Musician
Composer
Orchestral Librarian
In Rehearsal of Storm and Beauty
with the Australian Youth Orchestra
Featured
Featured
Storm and Beauty
by William Pipe
Premiered in 2025 at the Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp (2025).
Conducted by Stefan Cassomenos
Thunderstorms are a fascinating natural phenomena that happen every day across the Earth. Written for the concert Through the Prism, this piece aims to illustrate the colours exhbited by a thunder storm throughout its lifecycle, as well as serve as a tribute to the composer’s own storm chasing journeys.
HMAS Sydney (II)
by William Pipe
Written in 2025
This piece is a commemoration of the ship, and her sailors. The intent of this work is not to glorify war, or to diminish the sheer scale of the attrocities that WW2 brought. This is simply the composer's interpretation and realisation of one story amongst millions from this time period.
HMAS Sydney was a ship of the Royal Australian Navy from 1935 until 1941 where she was sunk. She was a very successful ship during the early WW2 years, having most notably sunk two Italian ships in the Mediterranean Sea during 1940.
It was in 1941 on a routine escort and patrol mission off the coast of Western Australia that she would intercept the German radier ship Kormoran. During the engagement, both ships struck each other to great effect, causing both to sink.
Whilst the Kormoran had numerous survivors picked up by other ships in the area, the Sydney sunk with a complete loss of life, remaining the largest loss of life in the Australian Navy’s history.