Michael Hannan (composer)

Michael Francis Hannan (born 1949) is an Australian composer, keyboardist, and musicologist. Described in Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians as a composer “exceptionally gifted for the exploration of tonal, polytonal, and atonal techniques”, Hannan is also the author of a critical biography of the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. During the 1970s and early 1980s he also worked as commercial composer and arranger, rock performer, piano accompanist, music journalist and music editor. In 1986 Hannan was appointed to the Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education (now Southern Cross University) to develop a BA program in contemporary popular music (the first in Australia) and in 1987 became head of the college’s Performing Arts and Music Divisions. As of 2015 he remains an adjunct professor of music in the Southern Cross University School of Arts and Social Sciences. Hannan’s early academic career was particularly associated with the work of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. He first became interested in Sculthorpe’s piano compositions while still a high school student in New South Wales and decided to write his final year music essay on the composer, which accord