Fia Fiell is the moniker of Vietnamese-Australian electronic musician, synthesist, composer and pianist Carolyn Schofield. Drawing on her classical training, she performs as a keyboardist on multiple synthesisers, playing and processing them in real time to create otherworldly and unsettling soundscapes that meld lush melodic cycles and ecstatic drones. Wielding an improvisational and elastic approach to time, space and rhythm, she creates evocative and arresting compositions that feel as powerful and confronting as they do warm, organic and intimate.

Schofield’s versatility and distinctiveness as an artist has found unusual appeal among electronic, experimental and contemporary classical audiences alike. Since her debut release ‘A Hair, A Heap’ in 2016, she has performed at renowned electronic music events including Berlin Atonal’s Laterne for Dark Mofo, Freedom Time, Inner Varnika, Resident Advisor’s 24/7 Melbourne and Room40’s Open Frame.

She followed the release of her 2018 album ‘All In The Same Room’ with Australian and European tours, and has been hand-picked for support slots for celebrated international artists including Merzbow, Laurel Halo and Rashad Becker. 

She has been commissioned as a composer of electronic and notated electroacoustic works by Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, the Australian Art Orchestra, the Melbourne Recital Centre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Play On and more, while she’s collaborated with respected Melbourne artists including members of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (for Hear My Eyes), Jonnine Standish of celebrated Melbourne duo HTRK, guzheng artist Mindy Meng Wang and trumpeter Peter Knight of the Australian Art Orchestra.

Schofield’s recorded work for local labels Nice Music, Butter Sessions, Body Promise and Chapter Music have been gained critical acclaim, with her album ‘All In The Same Room’ proclaimed as coming ‘awfully close to perfection’ in Bandcamp’s Best Cassette Releases of 2018. More recently, 2021 saw the release of Gap Tooth, a new album as part of acclaimed art-rock trio Jaala, as well as Undercurrent 暗涌,a new collaborative work with guzheng artist Mindy Meng Wang.

Fia Fiell is supported by On the Road Again, a Victorian Government initiative to bring live music back across the state.
 

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