Illawarra Dances is a musical homage to the geographical area in New South Wales where I spent much of my youth. The "Illawarra" is a long, narrow coastal plain, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the mountains of the Great Dividing Range on the other, which lies just south of Sydney. While Illawarra Dances follows no strict programmatic idea, it does try to give some sense of this place, an area that has been called one of the most beautiful in Australia.  

The music is in two main sections and is typical of my work in that it couples melodies that can be quite long and sinuous, or constructed out of short repetitive fragments, with energetic rhythmic ostinato patterns. Rhythmic impetus is, in fact, one of the principal elements in Illawarra Dances. The rhythmic devices employed include the use of additive rhythms (alternating bars of 11/8 and 13/8) in the second main section of the piece that, along with the syncopated rhythms in the first section, continually propel the music along, reflecting not only the sense of energy and vitality of the Illawarra area in general, but also referring more specifically to the impact that the steel and mining industries have had on this area over the past seventy-five years.