Artist : Dale Cornelius ft. Eclective Strings
Album: What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind?
Genre: Narrative Chamber Cycle / Modern Classical
Format: Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio & Stereo
Length: 6 tracks / 31 minutes
Release Date: October 2026
Award-winning Australian composer explores memory, grief and renewal through an immersive new chamber work featuring ‘Eclective Strings’.
Due for release in October 2026, the six-track album brings together string quartet, synthesizers and found sound in an immersive production mixed in Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio. Created with Melbourne-based string collective Eclective Strings, the project represents a major new chapter for Cornelius, moving beyond his celebrated career in screen composition into a more intimate and personal musical world.
The album began with a chance recording made late at night in Montalcino, Italy. While walking past the Concattedrale di San Salvatore, Cornelius captured the sound of a metal door moving in the wind. The strange, percussive sound became the central sonic motif of the title track and ultimately inspired the wider concept of the album.
Using Dolby Atmos, Cornelius has recreated the spatial experience of that original recording, placing the listener inside the soundscape with the string quartet and synthesizers arranged around them.
At the emotional heart of the album is ‘A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby)’, a string quartet composition originally written in 1999 during an extraordinarily difficult period in Cornelius’s life. His first-born son, Spencer, nearly died before and after childbirth. One of the first infants in Australia to undergo an operation in utero, Spencer was born at just 27 weeks and spent three months in neonatal intensive care, with doctors uncertain whether he would survive.
During this frightening period, Cornelius wrote A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby). The composition was never recorded and remained only as a manuscript for 26 years. Now, alongside the new material on What is Carried, What is Left Behind?, the piece finally receives its first recording.
For Cornelius, returning to the composition more than two decades later represents an act of reclamation — bringing together the fear and uncertainty of that moment with the perspective gained over the years since.
“Recording it now, alongside music written from that more honest place, is an act of reclamation. It’s the answer that piece has been waiting on for twenty-six years.”
Its inclusion gives the album a powerful sense of continuity, bringing together music from two very different points in Cornelius’s life and creating an emotional journey from uncertainty and memory towards hope and renewal.
“Recording it now, alongside music written from that more honest place, is an act of reclamation. It’s the answer that piece has been waiting on for twenty-six years.”
The album’s opening track, ‘In This Moment, What Matters Most?’, is similarly rooted in Cornelius’s personal experience. The phrase became an important reminder during a period of caring for his mother and dealing with anxiety, eventually becoming both a tattoo and the title of the album’s opening composition.
FROM MARY & MAX TO THE CONCERT HALL
Cornelius brings more than two decades of experience to What is Carried, What is Left Behind? His extensive screen-composition career includes more than 90 international productions, including Mary & Max, Backtrack, Till Human Voices Wake Us and five seasons of The Doctor Blake Mysteries.
He has also composed music for major IMAX documentaries including Hidden Universe and The Great Barrier Reef, as well as creating site-specific immersive works for the Australian Pavilions at the Shanghai and Nagoya World Expos.
His work has earned 18 major international awards and nominations, including AACTA and APRA/AMCOS recognition.
The new album has already received strong reactions from leading figures in the music industry, including Deutsche Grammophon’s Senior Manager A&R Anusch Alimirzaie, who described Cornelius’s music as “truly beautiful.”
Christian Kellersman, Executive Producer of Deutsche Grammophon’s Recomposed series, also praised the new work, saying: “I listened to your new album and it’s beautiful.”
London-based Major Tom Music Supervisor Marina Guy described the music as “truly stunning.”
A 55-MINUTE IMMERSIVE LIVE EXPERIENCE
Alongside the album, Cornelius is developing a 55-minute continuous live concert experience, transforming the record into one uninterrupted performance.
The production combines live string quartet, keyboards and sample manipulation with spoken word, bespoke lighting and video projection. Designed with festivals and curated concert series in mind, the performance can also incorporate local string quartets and language-specific spoken-word performers for international presentations.
TRACKLIST
- In This Moment, What Matters Most? – 5:06
- What is Carried, What is Left Behind? – 6:41
- Innocence – 3:46
- A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby) – 6:50
- Under an Impersonal Sky There is Hope – 4:57
- Bloom – 3:12
ABOUT DALE CORNELIUS
Dale Cornelius is an award-winning Australian composer based in Melbourne, with a career spanning more than two decades in screen scoring. His work has appeared across film, television, documentary and immersive projects, including Mary & Max, Backtrack, Till Human Voices Wake Us, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Hidden Universe and The Great Barrier Reef.
With What is Carried, What is Left Behind?, Cornelius steps outside the demands of screen composition to create a work where memory, place and personal experience become the story itself.
ABOUT ECLECTIVE STRINGS
Eclective Strings is a Melbourne-based string collective featuring members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Partridge String Quartet. Co-director Amy You has performed as a featured soloist on the Hans Zimmer Live world tour and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma. The ensemble’s wider credits include work with Sigur Rós, Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote, Lior and Wafia.
Follow Dale Cornelius
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dalecornelius_composer/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaleCorneliusOfficial/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/dalecornelius
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/dalecornelius
Website: https://dalecornelius.com.au/
