I’m thrilled that my orchestral work, Speculations on a Rainbow, has been awarded the IAWM Katy Abbott Prize for a work for large ensemble/orchestra!

This work has had a wonderful journey, from being commissioned in 2023 for the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, receiving its US premiere in July 2024 with the New Jersey Symphony at Princeton University, and being recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in August 2025. Thank you so much to Katy, a wonderful fellow Australian composer, for sponsoring this award! I’m grateful to be this year’s recipient.

See below the release from IAWM:

The International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) selected winners of its 2026 Search for New Music Competition.

It was a privilege to work with Emica Taylor, a flutist in her final year at the Australian National Academy of Music, to compose when two waters meet for solo flutist (flute, alto flute, singing glasses and voice). This work was commissioned for the 2026 ANAM Set, an initiative pairing New Zealand and Australian composers with students at ANAM. Working with Emica was beyond wonderful – I was so inspired by her musicality and creativity and she has an extraordinary future ahead of her. I’m glad to share her premiere performance with you below which took place at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, Australia this past May.

Thrilled that my piece, Retreat, from Earthworks, my recent release with Garling Wu, was included on this month’s Australian Art Music playlist curated by Cameron Lam!

Grateful to all my fantastic collaborators on this track: Martin Roberts on cello, Madeleine Xiao on piano, recording by Finn McLellan at Kenneth Myers Centre in Auckland, NZ, production and mixing by Garling Wu, and mastering by Clovis McEvoy.

Read more on Limelight and check out the full Bandcamp playlist here, featuring works by 20 Australian composers!

After years chipping away at this project I’m so thrilled to share Earthworks, a collaborative project with my wonderful friend and collaborator Garling Wu. We’re incredibly grateful to all the collaborators and supporters across Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond that were involved in bringing Earthworks to life. We owe particular thanks to Creative New Zealand whose financial support was pivotal and gave us the time and space to build our collaborative process, an experience which has expanded both of our creative practices tremendously. We released the project on Bandcamp on 1st May and it will hit remaining streaming platforms on 29 May.

It’s first post-release airing will be as part of On Air On Site‘s 48-hour radio art festival based in The Hague! The broadcast will be on Saturday 23 May at 5am CEST // 3pm NZST // 1pm AEST. What a way to kick off this next phase of the journey of Earthworks.

A collaboration spanning multiple continents, time zones, and years, “Earthworks”, by Aotearoa New Zealand-born composers Garling Wu and Jessie Leov, is an album of organic textures, delicate granular gestures, and surreal sonic spaces.

Composed remotely, the album responds to their changing environments as nomadic artists; from the metropolis of London, to rural landscapes of Japan, to ancient glaciers in Aotearoa New Zealand. During their travels, they gathered field recordings and samples, improvisations, voice memos, photographs, and words – sending these ‘musical letters’ to each other across vast distances.

Through contemplation of rapidly changing climates, Leov and Wu present their view of a fragile yet beautiful world.