Alex MacDonald.

Viola.

 
 
 

Over a decade ago Alex was enchanted away from engineering and science by his composerly friends writing music for him. Now as an alumna of ANAM and graduate of the University of Auckland, Alex is a freelance musician and barista. He has a long record of engaging with emerging composers, through several solo viola commissions and new music events in New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland. In 2013 he founded the Rothko Quartet and won the ROSL/Pettman scholarship which saw them tour Europe. Later he founded the Villani Piano Quartet and left to study in Naarm. He has performed with orchestras across New Zealand and Naarm, toured with live cinema around the world, appeared as several characters in the revolutionary group Blackbird Ensemble, and has been a performer for the Composers' Association of New Zealand's annual workshop for ten years. 

Alex plays a Thomas Warren viola commissioned in 1974 by his mentor Peter Barber. 

 

  • I reject the premise of the question. Art is the egg smeared napkin wrapped into a tight bon-bon by the used dental floss after breakfast. Art is a flower in the forest that no bee, wasp, fly, dragonfly, bear, elk, moose, ox, deer, ape, monkey, bird, human, ant, beetle will ever see. Art is the wretched squeak scrape of a cast-iron frying pan across the enamel trivet. 

  • Impossible to choose. I had the privilege of seeing Diapsalmata by Kym Dillon and then playing in it, which is a unique and incredible piece, even from one perspective once. Twice from two different perspectives is amazing. 

  • I represented my region in the National Science Fair in Year 9. I tested and compared various algorithms for a line-following robot I had built with a lego set. I met a student from La Jolla, USA, who had discovered something new about quasars (maybe it was pulsars) wow. 

  • Universe by Len Lye. It's a kinetic sculpture of a huge shiny ribbon, a red ball suspended in its path, and a magnetic base that moves the metal around and sporadically clangs into the ball. 

  • J. S. Bach Solo Cello Suites (played on viola)

    Come away, fellow sailors from Purcell’s Dido and Aenaes, Act 3 (alto part, sung) 

    home (feat. Jon Batiste) from empathogen by WILLOW (I’ve never actually danced to it, but it’s what I'm putting on the next time I'm on the D-Floor.)

Fountain.

This collaboration with Forest Collective in 2023 was Alex’s first time performing with Forest Collective.