Peter Knight - composition for theatre, dance, and, installation
Peter Knight is an Australian composer and sound designer whose work sits at a distinctive intersection of music, theatre, and technology. With a practice that spans electroacoustic composition, live performance, and interdisciplinary collaboration, he has developed an internationally recognised voice in the creation of work where sound is not accompaniment but architecture, shaping space, narrative, and experience from the inside.
Knight's most sustained and celebrated theatre collaboration has been with director and performance-maker Tamara Saulwick. Beginning with Pin Drop (2011), commissioned by Malthouse Theatre and a finalist for the Green Room Award for Best Composition and Sound Design, the partnership has produced some of the most acclaimed new Australian performance work of the past decade. Their work Endings (2015), commissioned by Sydney Festival and Arts House, won two Green Room Awards (Design and Realisation; Best Alternative and Hybrid Performance), received a Helpmann Award nomination for Best New Australian Work, and toured extensively including a 27-date run across China, and performances at Brighton Festival, On the Boards (Seattle) and PuSh Festival (Vancouver). Alter, an immersive audiovisual work for 16 iPads, further extended this collaboration with wide international audiences.
More recently, Knight composed and co-created My Self in That Moment (2021), commissioned by Chamber Made and Experimenta, a new work for iPads and soprano voice which premiered at The Substation in 2022 and was nominated for the APRA/AMC Art Music Award for Excellence in Experimental Music in 2023. He has also scored feature film Kid Snow (dir. Paul Goldman, 2023), composed alongside Warren Ellis, which premiered at Sydney Film Festival 2024, and created live scores for works presented at ACMI and Federation Square.
Knight holds a DMA in composition from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University and an MMus (performance) from the University of Melbourne, and is a faculty member of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Soundweavings residency.
Full CV
“As impressive as Saulwick’s performance is, it’s Peter Knight’s sound design that is the real star of this show: a haunting mix of brooding, blasting music, looped voices, echoing footsteps, and seemingly innocuous sounds – scissors cutting, a zip unzipping – that take on terrifying implications when amplified.” Richard Watts Arts Hub
Concept & direction Tamara Saulwick.
Composition & sound design Peter Knight
Performer & collaborators Tina Stefanou, Jessica Aszodi & Alice Hui-Sheng Chang
Creative Coder & programmer Steve Berrick
“My Self at That Moment opens up crucial areas for reflection, especially at a time when the digital self has become a proxy for the real.” The Conversation
Premiere season: The Substation 2022
Repurposing the omnipresent portable device, Alter is an audio-visual installation for 16 iPads and 16 people in a delicate meditation on invisible systems and interconnectedness. Bodies, light and space are threaded together in this intimate sensory encounter. Created by Tamara Saulwick in collaboration with Peter Knight, Martyn Coutts and Steve Berrick, Alter creates a pocket in time for the act of collective listening and contemplation.
Concept/creation/visuals:Tamara Saulwick
Composition: Peter Knight
Dramaturgy: Martyn Coutts
System design: Steve Berrick
Film footage: Scott Morrison & Tamara Saulwick
PRESENTATION HISTORY
Festival of Live Art, Arts House, Melbourne 2016 — North Melbourne Town Hall, Arts House, Melbourne 2017 — Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing China, 2018 — Xi'an International Studies University,Xi'an, China 2018 — FlashMob Space, West Village, Chengdu China 2018 — Grand Theater, Nanfang College of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China 2018 — Dance Center, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China 2018
The Current - Double Venturi
Co-curated by Peter Knight and Cameron Robbins
The Current brought together installation artists, composers and musicians to make unexpected music and art in all areas within the Melbourne Town Hall. Featuring Peter Knight, Cameron Robbins, Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Robbie Rowlands, David Murphy, Catherine Clover
Notice, composed and created by Peter Knight using recordings of a 1923 Melbourne City Council meeting and Australian birdsong. Images by Cameron Robbins and Catherine Clover. Presented by Double Venturi and the City of Melbourne in 2006.
Concept/text/performance Tamara Saulwick
Sound composition/performance Peter Knight
Set/lighting design: bluebottle - Ben Cobham
Songwriting/performance Paddy Mann (Grand Salvo)
Nominated for:
Best 'Contemporary & Experimental Performance' Green Room Award.
'Best New Australian Work' 2015 Helpmann Award
Pin Drop
Pin Drop is an audio-sensory work exploring the phenomenon of fear in our daily lives: how we respond to a noise in the dead of night, a shadowy movement glimpsed down a darkened alley, or the stranger breathing down the phone. Drawing on a range of interviews with people from six to 92 years of age, this grippingly intimate work is told through 12 voices – one live, 11 pre-recorded.
Creator/performer: Tamara Saulwick
Composition/sound design: Peter Knight
Set & lighting design: bluebottle - Ben Cobham and Frog Peck
Movement: Michelle Heaven
Green Room Award winner: 'Outstanding Production' - Hybrid Theatre
Awards
Green Room Award Nominations: 'Sound Design and Composition', 'Mise-en-scene', ‘Production Design'.
Green Room Award winner: 'Outstanding Production'