About

Laura Altman is a clarinetist, improviser and composer. She is based in Sydney, living and working predominantly on Gadigal and Wangal country.

Laura has been an important voice in the Sydney improvised and exploratory music scene for over 15 years. Her collaborations with Australian and international musicians have seen her perform across the country and around the world, and feature on multiple recordings, notably with trio Great Waitress. She is a long-standing member of Sydney improvisation collective Splinter Orchestra and style-free exponents Prophets.

In recent years Laura has ventured into solo improvisation. This practice involves a personalised and intuitive approach to the clarinet underpinned by a curiosity with resonance and explorations of how the instrument interplays and coexists within ‘environments’ of feedback, cassette tapes, tins and small objects.

Other current projects include duos with Low Flung (Couch), Monica Brooks, Melanie Herbert and Nick Ashwood, as well as ARIA-nominated folk-jazz-chamber ensemble, Chaika. More recently Laura has performed and recorded as clarinetist and singer with projects including art-folk band Bud Petal, Bonnie Stewart’s Bonniesongs, and collaborated with formidable songwriter and performer Melanie Eden. She now also plays with ARIA-nominated children’s entertainer Benny Time. 

Laura has been very active organising exploratory music events in Sydney, including the NOW now festival and series (2010-2013) and Nights at Tempe (2018-present) and the inaugural Antoun’s Dreamfest with Nick Dan in 2022. She co-hosts a radio show Listening Space on Eastside FM with MP Hopkins and Alexandra Spence, co-founded the Sydney exploratory music calendar www.emus.space, and co-runs a label Caterpillar, featuring digital releases by Sydney-based improvisers and composers and affiliates of Splinter Orchestra.

Laura studied composition at the Sydney Conservatorium and enjoys composing and producing instrumental and electro-acoustic music, as well as songs. She has had works commissioned and performed by Sydney Antiphony, Ensemble Offspring, North Sydney Girls High School and ACRONYM Orchestra, Emily-Rose Sarkova and Susie Bishop, and has developed exploratory pieces for primary school students.

As an educator, Laura has experience teaching private clarinet students, tutoring composition to senior high-school music students, facilitating school workshops and also running early-childhood music classes. She currently teaches casually at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

~

“Sitting between electronic processing and acoustic improvisation was Sydney clarinettist Laura Altman, who records her wistful, lightly muted sounds on small microphones placed beneath cans and other resonant objects, signal from which is then fed into cassette tapes whose playback is picked up again. Lovingly manipulating these devices with her feet while cupping her clarinet’s mouth against her thigh, this was a wonderfully corporeal work of gentle feedback, metallic buzzes and stop-start, warbling, acoustic noises.”
Review from Audible Edge Festival, Perth 2019 - Limelight Magazine

Photo on homepage by Josh Wells Photography
Website by Jill Farrar