Making use of patterns and processes in his work, and sometimes utilizes speech, gesture, and movement to heighten the theatricality of musical performance, all with the aim of creating music that is expressive and affecting. The extramusical themes in his work look outward to explore the natural world, and inward to reflect queer identity and experience. Hailing from a rural town in Australia’s southeast, Wally first began making music in his early teens. After high school, he moved to Melbourne to join rock bands, and spent several years writing songs, recording albums, and performing shows around the country. In 2002, Wally enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts composition program, where he collaborated with students from the Film & Television, Art, and Dance Schools.
Wally moved to New York in 2008 to begin a masters degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Julia Wolfe, and he began writing concert music for US ensembles such as Dither Guitar Quartet, Ensemble Mise-En, Escher String Quartet, futureCities, Mobius Percussion, Red Shift, Roomful of Teeth, and Sō Percussion. In 2011, Wally began pursuing a PhD in composition at Princeton University. Wally has received commissions from Architek Percussion, Astra Chamber Music, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, percussionist Becca Doughty, Gemini Duo, The Letter String Quartet (AU), the New Works For Percussion Project, Roomful of Teeth, Rubiks Collective, percussionist Eric Shuster, guitarist Laura Snowden (UK), Steady State, Tala Rasa, Three (AU), and percussionist Jason Treuting. A collaboration in 2012 with vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth and Melbourne poet Maria Zajkowski yielded three songs entitled The Ascendant that the ensemble recorded and released on their album Render, for which they received a Grammy nomination in 2015. Wally’s 2019 work ‘Moonlite,’ is a 90-minute oratorio for voices, percussion, and viola, with libretto by longtime collaborator Maria Zajkowski.
The work was premiered in Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, and Princeton, NJ, in May 2019 by Variant 6, Mobius Percussion, and Veronica Jurkiewicz. In November 2019, Wally received the Albert H Maggs Composition Award for the work. Wally and Maria’s most recent collaboration, I heart Artemis, was commissioned by the Maggs Award, was partly composed during a Millay Arts residency in October / November 2020, and was completed in 2021. The piece premiered in Philadelphia, PA, in March 2022, and in Melbourne, Australia, in September 2022. Current projects include a commission for a concert-length song cycle for Melbourne chamber ensemble Rubiks Collective with acclaimed jazz vocalist Gian Slater, to be premiered in 2024, and a commission for an opera for La Monnaie / De Munt opera house in Brussels Belgium, to be premiered in 2025. Wally currently divides his time between USA and Australia.