You could never accuse Ellen Kirkwood of lacking of ambition.
Her new, large-scale composition [A]part is about "all the major issues in the world at the moment", including climate change and the refugee crisis.
The cryptic title of the work, to be premiered on Saturday, reflects the feeling of being simultaneously connected to yet divorced from such problems.
"For instance, the internet makes us feel like we're closer to what's happening," Kirkwood says. "And we feel like we're on top of all these subjects. But we're not … it's kind of a question of do we really know what's going on, or are we in our own sort of bubble of a particular perspective?"
However, she doesn't want to preach.
"It's more of an urge to keep feeling something about these issues," she says. "One way that I can express that is through writing music that will hopefully speak to the audience on some level – maybe not even necessarily the level that I was thinking when I first wrote the music."
Performing the work is Sirens Big Band, the female jazz ensemble formed in 2010 by regulars at the long-running Young Women's Jazz Workshops, including bassist Jessica Dunn (band leader) and Kirkwood (trumpet and composer/arranger). The idea was to address the gender imbalance in the jazz community.
"But we didn't want to just be a band of women," Kirkwood says. "We wanted to be a band that played music that had our own sound and was very distinctive. Meanwhile we wanted to help everyone become better musicians."
She believes the gender imbalance reflects subconscious biases and points to the dramatic effect of the introduction in the 1970s of blind auditions in the orchestral world.
The imbalance remains elsewhere, however. Kirkwood says more role models is key. Jazz, for instance, has dramatically fewer female instrumentalists than singers, partly due to typecasting by which a flute is considered a "female" instrument and drums "male".
Kirkwood is confident that initiatives such as the Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival and the annual Jann Rutherford Memorial Award (for an outstanding female improviser – which she won) are helping create role models.
Progress is slow but steady. Figures from Sydney Conservatorium reveal that from 2006-11 the average proportion of women in the jazz course intake was 14 per cent while for 2012-17 that climbed to 23 per cent.
Kirkwood is also director of the Young Women's Jazz Orchestra (YWJO), founded last year by Sirens to stop student players being discouraged by the dominance of men.
"It's a wonderful atmosphere," she says. "They're all really good friends and I can tell that for years to come they're going to be playing together, hanging out together and keeping their passion for it. Not only is it encouraging them to be better musicians, but it's also creating a community where they feel more comfortable being themselves."
Like Sirens, the band plays mostly Australian compositions to help it develop its own sound, and both ensembles have a relationship with University of NSW, which provides free rehearsal spaces and the venue for the forthcoming performances of [A]part.
Preceded by a set from YWJO, [A]part will feature three of Australia's pre-eminent improvisers – saxophonist Sandy Evans, pianist Andrea Keller and singer Gian Slater.
Sirens Big Band: Io Myers Studio, UNSW, August 5, 5pm and 8pm.