About
Jessica Danz is an award-winning performer, composer, visual artist and writer who has spent three decades forging a highly individual creative path. A vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, she has created solo material for voice, violin and piano in her own virtuosic folk-noir style, as well as composing ensemble works and live scores for theatre and silent film. As a visual artist she works in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, textiles and photography. Using mythical characters and timeless narratives of journeys and metamorphosis to explore notions of identity and belonging, she examines the way in which outer landscapes are absorbed and assimilated into an inner world of dreams and stories.
Beginning tertiary study at the WA Conservatorium of Music at the age of fifteen, she studied the violin with Alan Bonds and Pal Eder, and continued to study the piano privately with Alice Carrard. She completed her degree in 1997 at the University of Western Australia, studying with Paul Wright. In her graduation year she was the winner of the Vose Concerto Prize, the Edith Cowan prize, and was a National String Finalist in the ABC Young Performers Competition. In 1999 she was awarded a full scholarship to attend the Australian National Academy of Music. Subsequently she turned more seriously to composition, completing her first solo album and touring the works in Australia, Japan, Germany, Denmark and Italy.
Working in theatre as both a performer and a composer, she won a Green Room Award in 2008 for Best Sound Design in Independent Theatre. In addition to many years of teaching and orchestral experience, she has also worked with a diverse range of chamber ensembles, including Duo Ipkendanz-Yong, the Pi Ensemble and the Yarra Trio. In 2009 she was awarded the Corinna d’Hage Mayer Memorial Scholarship at Melbourne University, completing a Master of Music in 2010.
After completing a Master of Music Performance in 2010, she spent the next few years focusing on her visual art practice, undertaking residencies throughout Australia and exhibiting locally and nationally. A series of residencies throughout Australia resulted in the creation of a series of large-scale abstract textile works inspired by landscape.
She moved to Scotland in 2017, where she was commissioned to create several live film scores, awarded a Creative Scotland grant to create a new work for string quintet, and recorded three new solo albums.
Jessica has held solo exhibitions at An Lanntair Arts Centre in the Outer Hebrides, the Vancouver Arts Centre in Albany WA, Kurb Gallery in Fremantle, and at the Central Greenough Historic Settlement. Group exhibitions include Art Quilt Australia (Craft & Design Gallery, Canberra), the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition, SSA & VSA Together (Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland), Hidden Talent (Barony Arts Centre, Scotland), and a group show at Kidogo Arthouse Gallery in Fremantle.
Returning to Perth, Western Australia in 2021, she is developing a new body of work inspired by motherhood, myth and metamorphosis, and working as a freelance violinist and teacher.