Name: Connor D’Netto
Nationality: Australian
Occupation: Composer, performer, producer
Current release: Connor D’Netto's new album Some Kinda Way, produced and recorded by Ben Gibson and Daniel Kassulke and mastered by Lawrence English, is out via A Guide to Saints. It features compositions by Connor D’Netto performed by Jason Noble (clarinets) and Shannon Luk (viola da gamba, nyckylharpa).

[Read our Lawrence English interview]
[Read our feature on the clarinet]

If you enjoyed this Connor D’Netto interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Soundcloud, Facebook, and bandcamp. 



The borders between producers, sound artists, and even songwriters are becoming increasingly blurry. What does being a composer mean today, would you say?

Totally, I definitely try not to get too bogged down by those borders, to treat them as pretty porous, so should I be drawn in one way or another there’s no resistance from myself.

I think of a composer, or at least how I define that role for myself, is someone who realises their work through/with others.

So as a non-music example, I think of an artist like Sol Lewit as a composer, if that makes sense?

Many people perceive classical music and contemporary composition as having high barriers of entrance, both for listeners and musicians. What have your own experiences been in this regard?

For musicians it certainly does — I wouldn’t be the musician I am without the years of singing/violin/piano lessons I had as a kid, which is a huge huge huge privilege most couldn’t be afforded.

But also think there is/should be as much room for people to come into it (particularly to come into composing) without the necessity of being versed in the enormous history, to just have the opportunity to pick up the tools, be in the space, and get to play with the types of creativity you get to play with in this space.

For audiences, it’s clear there’s the perception that there’s a high barrier to entry, and that perception is both coming from the general popular conception of this world but also being supported from within the artform.

Whenever the conversation of how to get more people interested in classical music comes up, there’s often this refrain from classical arts organisations that if people “just understood it”, that if they learned about it and knew some of the context/history etc, they’d appreciate it — my mum has bought into that, I know she often leaves concerts and feels that she was meant to “understand” it and didn’t.

I totally disagree with that approach. Sure, the history and context of the music is important and interesting. But I truly believe that if we present music in a way that allows audiences to come to it on their own terms, to see how it makes them feel and that there’s no right or wrong way to experience it, then that’s the way people will connect with it.

As of today, what kind of materials, ideas, and technologies are particularly stimulating for you?

From a craft point of view, I think of a lot of my practice as translations, taking ideas / concepts / techniques in one form and translating them to another.

So maybe that’s taking a technique or musical texture that I’d written for piano, and then trying to work out how that could translate to a solo flute. Or maybe it’s taking an electronic music production technique or effect and trying to translate/emulate that to a violin, and vice versa. Or what’s a still-life black and white film photograph translated to an electroacoustic track.

That’s the stuff that keeps me going day-to-day in my studio.

Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal  impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?

I’ve always just had the impulse to create in some or any form. I think I’d probably be as happy as a carpenter as I am a musician, I just enjoy and feel the need to be creating something — my other loves are gardening, cooking, photography, graphic design, making furniture and other random crafts, and I really want to try my hand at pottery and sowing.

I don’t know if I can put my finger on where that need to create stems from, it’s just always been part of who I am and what I enjoy most.

As for how that relates with the external world, most important is to use my platform as an artist to the best of my ability to affect positive change. So whether that’s supporting fundraising with my music or simply using my public profile to bring awareness, that’s first and foremost. Within my art, that’s maybe a bit more abstract, I tend to let that filter through, that however I am feeling or whatever is on my mind can come through in whatever way it does or doesn’t, or at least that’s how I approach things at the moment.

But there’s certainly a great many issues in the world I feel hugely passionate about and have found their way into my art, from LGBTQIA+ issues to the various concerning political moves toward the right, to the ongoing horrors occurring in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and so many other places globally.

Tell me a bit about the sounds & creative directions, artists & communities, as well as the colleagues & creative hotspots of your current hometown, please. How do they influence your music?

I currently live in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, which truly is an incredible and hugely inspiring place to be. I think that’s entirely down to the volume and diversity of what’s going on, that I can go out on most nights and find some weird experimental gig or probably that a friend is up to something interesting somewhere.

The artists that most inspire me are the omnivorous creatives who freely roam across genre/style, who can adapt to work in any space without compromising their voice, artists like Helen Svoboda and ensembles like Rubiks Collective come to mind.

There’s space and appetite here to just try things, to make mistakes in a supportive environment, and that’s totally freeing as an artist and thrilling as an audience member.

[Read our Helen Svoboda interview]

Composing has always had an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?

For me it’s a practice/balance of being steeped in that context and background, those histories and techniques, then forgetting them or trying to be unburdened by them and letting what happens happen as I write.

Perhaps as a composer, so as before someone who realises their art through/with others, communication is such a vitally important part of what I do. If you’re writing something for a clarinettist, or a string quartet, or an orchestra, most of the job is to communicate your ideas to someone else so they can realise them.

They come to it with their background, their training, and the context in which they have to play your music (eg an orchestra probably only has one or two rehearsals to put your new piece together). So you need to communicate your ideas, however new and unknown, to them in a way which connects with the tradition they're coming from.

At least that’s my approach most of the time.

How much potential for something “new” is there still in composition? What could this “new” look like?

I think there is, but I tend not to think about “new” or feel the necessity to chase the new in my work.

I guess the context is always new, we bring to what we create our own entirely individual lens and circumstances, so in some way there’s always a newness.

What role do electronic tools and instruments play for your creative process? What does your creative space / studio look like and what tools does it contain?

At the moment I have an office space in my home that’s shared with my housemate. She has one corner of the room and I the opposite, though she’s only working from home a day or two each week. The digital piano (a vintage Yamaha Klavinova) aside, it’s hilariously obvious which side of the room is whose:

hers is pretty straightforward, a desk with laptop and second screen, a couple of prints on the wall and a few potted cacti;

mine, yes, the desk, computer, screens and harddrives, but the wall plastered with many small images, photos, scraps of paper with little notes, swatches of fabric or paper or card with patterns, large sheets of brown paper collaged with inspo images and references for upcoming projects, lots of small ceramics, some abstract, some little bowls or plinths, filled with pens, paperclips, pencils that have been used up until they’re barely an inch.

My synths have to stay away most of the time, simply for lack of space, but in a cupboard in the corner of the space I have a collection of modular synths, some effects pedals, a DIY spring reverb, and a lovely small analogue mixed that sounds great as a no-input-feedback instrument.



Working with long forms, complex concepts or new vocabulary is potentially more challenging today because they require us to remember things that happened perhaps minutes ago – while most of us are finding it hard to focus even on what's happening right now. Both as a composer and as a listener yourself, how do you deal with this?

That’s something I’m particularly interested in at the moment, something I think I’m trying to address in some way, to create spaces and sonic environments that draw you in and help you (or perhaps provoke you) to be still, not necessarily to focus, but to be present. It’s almost a mindfulness thing in some ways.

I guess my approach is by trying to find a balance, that there’s enough going on to hold your attention, to provide surprise and relief, and to gradually draw that out into longer forms, more sustained and sparse moments.

For many artists, life-changing musical experiences take place live. Few works these days, however, are performed beyond their premiere. What, do you feel, does this mean for composers, and the music they write, and how does this reality influence your own work?

There’s a few ways to approach this I think. In one sense, I guess it places a heightened importance on recording your work — though I agree that life changing artistic experiences often happen live, I do think they also happen through recorded music. I certainly can think of a few occasions where that’s been the case for me.

The other approach is to build in flexibility to your work where that’s possible, to create work with multiple options on how that’s realised so it can adapt to different settings.

An example in this album is the titular work of the album, Some Kinda Way — on the album, all eleven clarinet parts are played by Jason Noble, and when we’ve performed it live, Jason plays the solo line along with the other ten parts pre-recorded. But it could also be performed by an ensemble of eleven clarinet players, totally acoustic with no tech required.

How, would you say are live performances of your music and your recording projects connected at the moment? How do they mutually influence and feed off each other?  

They’re both very connected. I’m most often composing with both in mind, and in doing so, working out ways to highlight and best serve the underlying ideas in each setting. So my hope is that a recorded version of a piece is as fulfilling an experience as a live performance, and that my work can adapt to best utilise the nuances of the different settings/mediums.

Working across both settings and having those different practices in mind also really feeds the craft of my composing. I’m constantly finding things from one setting that I want to work out ways to achieve in the other, which inevitably inspires a totally new musical idea.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

Like any new technology there is the opportunity for it to be a creative tool. However for me there are a few huge ethical/operational hurdles that need to be cleared before we (or at least I) can be okay with using generative AI.

The first and most pressing are the immense ecological implications of this technology. Secondly is the huge amount of plagiarised / uncredited / compensated information and creative work that has been stolen to feed and train these models. Until these are addressed, there’s no way I feel okay with using generative AI in its current form.

That’s not to say that if you get one of these open-source models, you host it on your own computer/server in your house that you power entire from solar and you train it exclusively on your own work or work that you’ve acquired the appropriate rights for, that you couldn’t use that AI without any ethical issues — amazing, go for it!

But that’s not what we’re talking about most of the time, that’s not what’s available to most of us to use.