Australia on Music Theory Print

Alan John

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Alan John (born 7 May 1958 in Sydney) is an Australian composer. He studied music at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1980. His compositions include original music for various plays, films (such as Holding the Man, Three Dollars and The Bank) and TV series (including Love My Way), and the musicals Jonah Jones, Orlando Rourke and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Operas His opera The Eighth Wonder was premiered in 1995 by Opera Australia. It was revived in 2000, during the Sydney Olympics Arts Festival, and again in 2016. In May 2008, his chamber opera Through the Looking Glass, to a libretto by Andrew Upton, was premiered by the Victorian Opera at the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, conducted by Richard Gill. In May 2011, his opera How to Kill your Husband (and other handy household hints), to a libretto by Timothy Daly and based on Kathy Lette’s 2007 book of the same name, premiered at the same venue under the same conductor. Awards and nominations APRA-AGSC Awards The annual Screen Music Awards are presented by Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC) for television and film scores and soundtracks. - 2004 Shark Net – John Best

Alex Lithgow

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Alexander Frame Lithgow (1 December 1870 in Glasgow – 12 July 1929 in Launceston, Tasmania) was a Scottish-born, New Zealand and Australian based composer and bandleader known as the “Sousa of the Antipodes”. Biography Known as Alec to his family, Lithgow was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1870. His family emigrated to Invercargill, New Zealand in 1876, where he attended Invercargill Grammar School and Presbyterian First Church of Invercargill. His family was musical, performing as the six-member Lithgow Concert Company around Southland. As a child, Lithgow learnt violin and cornet, initially being taught cornet by his father. In 1881, Lithgow joined the local brass band, the Invercargill Garrison Band. By 1886 he had advanced to be the band’s solo and principal cornetist. However, despite often being stated, he never was this band’s conductor. Lithgow began composing for brass band from a young age. His first composition to be published was the march Wairoa in 1887, named after a ship the band played on at the Invercargill estuary. In the following years, he played first violin with the Theatre Royal Orchestra and won national solo cornet titles. In 1893, aged 23, he toured New Zea

Alfred Hill (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Alfred Francis Hill CMG OBE (16 December 186930 October 1960) was an Australian-New Zealand composer, conductor and teacher. Life and work Alfred Hill was born in Melbourne in 1869. His year of birth is shown in many sources as 1870, but this has now been disproven. He spent most of his early life in Wellington before moving to Germany, where he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory between 1887 and 1891 under Gustav Schreck, Hans Sitt and Oscar Paul. Later he played second violin with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, under guest conductors including Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Bruch, and Reinecke. While there, some of his compositions were played with fellow students, and several were published in Germany. These included the Scotch Sonata for violin and piano. Hill returned to New Zealand, where was appointed director of the Wellington Orchestral Society. In 1897 Hill returned to Australia, where he taught for a number of years. He married his first wife, Sarah Brownhill Booth, a New Zealander, on 6 October 1897 in Paddington, New South Wales. They were to have three children, who were given the Wagnerian names Isolde, Tristan and Elsa. and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St Geo

Andrew Chubb

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Andrew Chubb (born 1975 in Sydney, Australia) is a Newcastle, New South Wales based pianist, composer, teacher, and lecturer. Since 1999, he has taught and lectured at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music, University of Newcastle, Australia. As a pianist, Chubb has always taken interest in a variety of classical repertoire including performing contemporary minimalist piano works, especially those of the American composer Philip Glass. By 2006, he was the first and only Australian pianist who had publicly performed the main cycle of published solo piano works by Glass. These concerts were given at the Newcastle Conservatorium Concert Hall in 2002, 2003, 2006, and the Newcastle City Hall, the Brisbane Conservatorium of Music in 2007 and Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada in 2008. In 2007 he gave the Australian premiere of the large-scale 75min solo piano work, The Book of Sounds, by the late German composer, Hans Otte and in the same concert on the Australian made Stuart & Sons piano the World Premiere of his own solo piano work, Meditation at Bar Beach. In recent years, Andrew Chubb has devoted time to composition and since 2004, has had works published by Publications by W

Andrew Ford (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew Ford (born 1957) is an English-born Australian composer, writer, and radio presenter, known for The Music Show on ABC Radio National. Early life and education Andrew Ford was born in 1957 in Liverpool, UK. Career Ford was Fellow in Music at Bradford University from 1978 to 1982. After moving to Australia, he lectured at the School of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, NSW, from 1983 to 1995, *2016: Order of Australia Medal APRA / Art Music Awards The APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA). They include the Art Music Awards (until 2009 Classical Music Awards) which are distributed by APRA and the Australian Music Centre (AMC). These awards include: - 2004 Learning to Howl – Ford Best Composition by an Australian Composer - 2005 Tales of the Supernatural – Ford – Australian String Quartet, Jane Edwards Vocal or Choral Work of the Year - 2008 Ford Outstanding Contribution by an Individual - 2009 Learning to Howl – Ford – Arcko Symphonic Project Best Performance of an Australian Composition - 2011 A Dream of Drowning – Ford – West Australian Symphony Orchestra Work of the Year – Orchestral - 2013 Blitz – F

Ann Carr-Boyd

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Ann Kirsten Carr-Boyd (born 13 July 1938) Her formal music studies were at the University of Sydney, where in 1960, she was one of two students (the other was Norma Tyer) to graduate with a Bachelor of Music degree. Carr-Boyd then received the university’s first Master of Arts in music. She also studied in London with Peter Racine Fricker and Alexander Goehr. She married and had children in London. In 1975 she won the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. ), and she and her three daughters play in the orchestra. Her quasi-namesake and fellow Australian composer Anne Boyd is no relation. Music Carr-Boyd’s works encompass a symphony, concertos (piano; violin), chamber music and vocal music. The harpsichord figures prominently in her output, such as in Suite for Véronique. She is perhaps best known to the general music-listening public for a short piece for mandolin ensemble, titled Fandango. It was nominated for the Most Performed Classical Composition at the 1999 APRA Awards, and it ranked 55 in the 2008 Classic 100 chamber survey conducted by ABC Classic FM radio. References

Anna K. Jacobs

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Anna K. Jacobs is an Australian composer, lyricist, and book writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is best known for composing the music and co-writing the book for the musical Teeth. Career Jacobs made her professional American theatrical debut in 2009 with POP! at the Yale Repertory Theatre, which received the 2010 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical. The musical, a collaboration with book writer and lyricist Maggie-Kate Coleman, was first developed by the pair as a student thesis project when they attended NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. It went on to receive productions at Studio Theatre in D.C. and City Theatre in Pittsburgh, the latter of which starred Anthony Rapp as Andy Warhol. In 2012, Diversionary Theatre in San Diego produced the world premiere of Jacobs’ musical Harmony, Kansas, with book and lyrics by Bill Nelson. The production received three Craig Noel Award nominations for Outstanding New Musical, Outstanding New Score, and Outstanding Direction of a Musical. Jacobs was commissioned by George Street Playhouse to write the music and lyrics for Anytown, a musical developed in collaboration with book writer Jim Jack fo

Ariel Shearer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ariel Shearer (c. 1905 – ?) was an Australian composer and classical pianist. She learned piano under William Silver (born March 1878), who also trained Elder Scholars Merle Robertson, John Bishop, Miriam Hyde and Ruth Naylor. She left Adelaide in 1924 to study at the Royal College of Music. On her departure for London, Charles Cawthorne organised a benefit concert for her in the Adelaide Town Hall, which featured William Silver, George Pearce, Charles Schilsky, Harold S. Parsons, Harold Wylde FRCO, Vera Thrush AMUA, Hilda Gill AMUA, F. Stone, and basso Richard Watkins. She returned to Adelaide three years later, and was reported as having appreciated the experience, but was handicapped by a shortage of money and having to board with a family who were not musically inclined, or perhaps did not appreciate the artist’s need to practise for hours on end. In 1931, she and Charlotte Grivell (mezzo-soprano), a fellow student in London, were appointed choral liaison commissioners for Girl Guides in South Australia. The two held joint concerts during the ensuing decade then appear to have retired from the stage. They were also keen equestrians, and neither married. Her sister, Charlotte An

Arthur Benjamin

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Arthur Leslie Benjamin (September 18, 1893 – April 10, 1960) was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rumba (1938) and of the Storm Clouds Cantata, featured in both versions of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man who Knew Too Much, in 1934 and 1956. Early life and war Arthur Benjamin was born in Sydney on 18 September 1893 into a Jewish family, although he was a non-practicing Jew. His parents moved to Brisbane when Arthur was three years old. At the age of six, he made his first public appearance as a pianist and his formal musical training began three years later with George Sampson, the Organist of St John’s Cathedral and Brisbane City Organist. In 1911, Benjamin won a scholarship from Brisbane Grammar School to the Royal College of Music (RCM), where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, harmony and counterpoint with Thomas Dunhill, and piano with Frederic Cliffe. In 1914, he joined the Officer Training Corps, receiving a temporary commission in April 1915. He served initially in the infantry, as 2nd Lieutenant with the 32nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and, in November 1917, he transferred to th

Barry Conyngham

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Barry Ernest Conyngham (born 27 August 1944) is an Australian composer and academic. He has over 70 published works and over 30 recordings featuring his compositions, and his works have been premiered or performed in Australia, Japan, North and South America, the United Kingdom and Europe. He is former Dean of the Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. Biography Conyngham was born in Sydney. He was initially interested in jazz and studied with Raymond Hanson but turned his attention to orchestral writing in the mid-1960s with encouragement from Peter Sculthorpe. He completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney in 1967, and a Master of Arts (Hons.) This was unusual at the time, as Australian composers typically chose Europe and Britain as their location for further study. In 1972, he went to the United States on a Harkness Fellowship and gained a Certificate of Post-Doctoral Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 1973. He was a Fellow of Princeton University 1973–74, and Composer-in-Residence at the University of Aix-Marseille in 1974–75. He was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne from 1975 to 1979, then Senior Lecturer 1

Betty Beath

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Elizabeth Margaret Beath, née Eardley, (born 19 November 1932) is an Australian composer, pianist, and music educator. Life and career Betty Beath was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, and began piano lessons at the age of three. She was twice a finalist in the ABC Concerto competition when in her teens. In 1950, she was awarded a University of Queensland Music Scholarship, After completing her education, Beath settled in Brisbane and took positions as an accompanist and later teacher at Queensland Conservatorium and was Head of Music at St. Margaret’s Girls’ School, Brisbane. She is an Examiner with the Australian Music Examinations Board. Beath received a Southeast Asian Fellowship from the Australia Council in 1974 to conduct research in Bali and Java. She is married to author/illustrator, David Cox. She represented women composers of Australia at the 3rd International Congress on Women in Music, held in Mexico City in 1984. She has also been an executive member of the International League of Women Composers. Her most performed music is perhaps the piano solo piece “Merindu Bali” (Bali Yearning), written for the Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan and dedicated to the memory of the

Brenda Gifford

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Brenda Gifford (born 1968) is an Australian Yuin classical composer, saxophonist and pianist. She was a member of the Australian rock band Mixed Relations. She is based in Canberra and was an archivist in the Indigenous Collection Branch of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA). Career Gifford was born in 1968 and grew up in Sydney and Wreck Bay, near Jervis Bay, New South Wales. Beginning in the late 1980s Gifford played saxophone and piano as a member of the band Mixed Relations with Bart Willoughby. During the 1990s she contributed to Kev Carmody’s 1991 album Eulogy (For A Black Person), and taught music at Eora College in Redfern, New South Wales. She left her teaching job to focus on the band as it became more popular. Mixed Relations toured internationally and gained local success when their single Aboriginal Woman reached #89 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 in 1993. The group disbanded by the end of the 1990s, and after a break of several years, Gifford began a new career as a composer. In 2016, Gifford participated in the AMPlify Indigenous Composer Initiative pilot program, which aimed to support the creation of new work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Brett Dean

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Brett Dean (born 23 October 1961) is an Australian composer, violist and conductor. Early life Brett Dean was born, raised, and educated in Brisbane. He attended Brisbane State High School. He started learning violin at age 8, and later studied viola with Elizabeth Morgan and John Curro at the Queensland Conservatorium, where he graduated in 1982 with the Conservatorium Medal for the highest-achieving student of the year. In 1981 he was a prizewinner in the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards. Career From 1985 to 1999, Dean was a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2000, he decided to pursue a freelance career and returned to Australia, where his many appointments have included curating classical music programs with the Sydney Festival (2005) and the Melbourne Festival (2009). As a composer and musician, he is a regularly invited guest to concert stages around the world. He was the Creative Chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s 2017/2018 season. Dean was artistic director of the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne until June 2010, when his brother, Paul, took up the post. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrated Dean’s 50th birthday, and

Carl Vine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Carl Edward Vine, (born 8 October 1954) is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music. From 1975 he has worked as a freelance pianist and composer with a variety of theatre and dance companies, and ensembles. Vine’s catalogue includes eight symphonies, thirteen concertos, music for film, television and theatre, electronic music and numerous chamber works. From 2000 until 2019 Carl was the Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia. Within that role he was also Artistic Director of the Huntington Estate Music Festival from 2006, and of the Musica Viva Festival (Sydney) from 2008. In 2005 he was awarded the Don Banks Music Award. In the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Vine was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), “for distinguished service to the performing arts as a composer, conductor, academic and artistic director, and to the support and mentoring of emerging performers.” Vine currently lectures in composition and orchestration at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He studied physics, then composition at the University of Western Australia (now the UWA Conservatorium of Music), before moving to Sydney in 1975, where he worked as a freelance pia

Cezary Skubiszewski

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Cezary Jan Skubiszewski (born 1948) is a Polish-born Australian film and television composer whose work has received international acclaim winning numerous awards. Most notably Cezary is the recipient of four Australian Academy Film Television Awards (AACTA). He composed the film scores for Two Hands (1999), Death Defying Acts (2008) Red Dog (2011), The Sapphires (2012) and the TV series, Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018). Personal life and education Skubiszewski was born in Warsaw, Poland. His mother was a classical pianist. Skubiszewski, himself began piano lessons at 8 years of age and received a classical musical education over a period of 10 years under the tutelage of the choir director of the Warsaw Opera. In the late 1960s, Skubiszewski played in bands including ACB with other Warsaw musicians such as Aleksander Bem. He then spent one year in Paris and did not return to Poland due to the nation’s political situation and his own sense of wanderlust. They have two children, Viva Bianca and Jan Skubiszewski. Both work in the Australian entertainment industry. Career In Australia, during 1978 and 1979, Skubiszewski played the Moog synthesizer, Rhodes piano and Clavinet in his jazz

Christopher Gordon (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Christopher John Gordon (born 1956) is an English-born Australian composer and politician best known for his film scores, but has also received major classical commissions. His film scores include, Ladies in Black (2018), Mao’s Last Dancer (2009), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) and On the Beach (2000). Political career In 2016, Gordon ran for the Arts Party in the City of Ryde based seat of Bennelong, achieving 1.08% of the vote. In 2017, he was elected as councillor on the East Ward of the City of Ryde for the Greens and was chosen as deputy mayor, serving a single term in 2017–2018. Gordon sought re-election for a second term on Council on 4 December 2021, but was unsuccessful. Awards and nominations Gordon has won national awards for composition, both in Australia and overseas. - 1998 Moby Dick (Christopher Gordon) APRA Awards: Best Television Theme - rowspan=“3” 2000 rowspan=“3” On the Beach (Gordon) Australian Screen Music Awards: Best Music for a Mini-Series or Telemovie - Australian Screen Music Awards: Best Original Title Theme for a Series, Serial or Mini-Series - Australian Screen Music Awards: Best Soundtrack Album - 2001 When Good Ghouls Go Bad (

Christopher Willcock

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Christopher Willcock (born 1947) is an Australian Jesuit priest and composer of liturgical music. Life Willcock studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (graduated 1974) and theology in Melbourne with the Jesuit Theological College, a member college of the United Faculty of Theology. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1977. He then pursued doctoral studies in sacramental and liturgical theology at the Institut Catholique de Paris. In 1998, he won the University of Melbourne’s Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. Collaborating with cartoonist and artist Michael Leunig, Willcock won the 2006 Classical Music Award for Choral or Vocal Work of the Year with excerpts from his work titled Southern Star (his cycle of nine Christmas carols composed in collaboration with Leunig). The carols are composed for 4-part adult voices, or 3-part children’s voices and are accompanied by harp - reminiscent of Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Other major works have been performed by the Tallis Scholars (May 2000) and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (December 1998). In 2006 he was the St Thomas More Chair of Jesuit Studies at the University of Western Australia. He also gave the annu

Colin Black

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Colin Black is an Australian experimental music composer, sonic media arts practitioner, radio artist and researcher. Black has been awarded the 2015 New York Festivals International Gold Trophy Winner for Sound Art and the 2003 Prix Italia Award for Best Music Radio – Composed Work. Black has also achieved preselection status in the 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2017 Prix Phonurgia Nova, the 2013 and 2019 Prix Marulić (Croatia), 2018 Grand Prix Nova (Romania), and 2018 UK International Radio Drama Competition. Black’s commissions to create major works include the following organisations: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Český rozhlas, Deutschlandradio, Parramatta Heritage Centre, Lismore City Council and Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA). His works have been selected for events including En Red O 2000 music festival in Barcelona, Spain, the Festival Synthese in Bourges, France, Rencontres Musiques Nouvelles, Lunel France, 60x60 Pacific Basin Regional Concert Los Angeles USA, Zèppelin 2004-Festival de Arte Sonoro in Barcelona, Spain, Hipersonica 2004 in São Paulo, Brazil, The Literature Sound Barrier 2002 in Wien, Austria, Sydney University’s Live Wires concerts ‘97, ‘98, an

Colin Brumby

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Colin James Brumby (18 June 1933 – 3 January 2018) was an Australian composer and conductor. Biography Brumby was born in Melbourne and educated at the Glen Iris State School, Spring Road Central School, and Melbourne Boys’ High School. He studied at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, from which he graduated in 1957 with a diploma in education. In 1953 he was a finalist in the Australian Youth Aria competition, eventually winning the Lieder Award. He was organist at St. Oswald’s Glen Iris from 1950 to 1953. Before travelling to Europe in 1962 he taught in Queensland schools and was for a time the head of music at Kelvin Grove Teacher’s College. and joined more recently by composers such as Gerard Brophy, Stephen Cronin, Robert Davidson, Kent Farbach, Stephen Leek, Peter Rankine and Nigel Sabin who have attained similar renown. In 1971, he received his Doctorate of Music from the University of Melbourne. In 1981 Brumby was awarded an Advance Australia Award for services to music. He has also won the Don Banks Fellowship (1990) Brumby died in Brisbane on 3 January 2018. * The Bunyip, operetta * The Haunted House of Highgate Hill, operetta * The Spirit of Eureka, ope

Colin Smith (religious and hymnodist)

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Colin Declan Smith (10 June 1928 – 23 October 2005) Arguably Colin’s signature work is the Mass Shalom, originally composed in 1977 and one of the only Australian Mass settings popular before the revision of the English translation of the Mass to be reworked for the 2010 translation. As Colin had died some five years earlier, the revisions were the work of Paul Mason. He was also the director of the John Paul Singers, a Catholic sacred choir formed for the Papal Visit of Pope John Paul II, until May 2005, shortly before his death, when he handed the baton to Donrita Reefman, who in turn passed on the baton to Julie Spencer in September 2014. Death and legacy Brother Colin Smith died in Sydney, Australia on Sunday 23 October 2005 at the age of 77; after his death, Christian Brothers medium Edmund Rice Online described Colin as having given a “huge contribution to liturgical music in Australia”. and Melbourne to mark the tenth anniversary of his death. References

Constantine Koukias

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Constantine Koukias (born 14 October 1965) is a Tasmanian composer and opera director of Greek ancestry based in Amsterdam, where he is known by his Greek name of Konstantin Koukias. He is the co-founder and artistic director of IHOS Music Theatre and Opera, which was established in 1990 in Tasmania’s capital city, Hobart. Koukias’s works range from large-scale music theatre and opera to mobile installation art events. His atmospheric compositions are characterised by mesmerising temporal, spatial and production designs, while his recent works exhibit eastern influences. His avant-garde approach to the presentation of opera has resulted in hybrid productions such as Days and Nights with Christ, To Traverse Water, Mikrovion, The Divine Kiss, Tesla – Lightning in His Hand and The Barbarians. His music theatre works include ICON, Kimisis – Falling Asleep, Borders, Orfeo, Rapture – Sonic Taxi Performance, Schwa – The Neutral Vowel, Antigone and The Da Ponte Project. Koukias was commissioned in 1993 by the Sydney Opera House Trust to compose the large-scale music theatre piece ICON to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House. His Incantation II for soprano and digital de

Craig Porteils

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Craig Porteils was an Australian music producer, mixer, audio engineer, composer, songwriter, and guitarist based in Sydney. Biography Career Porteils began his career in the decade of the 1980s, as the guitarist of his own band. However, Porteils excelled in behind-the-scenes production and started producing music in continuation. From 1989 to 1996, Porteils was based out of Los Angeles where he experienced great success writing for huge artists such as Cher, having helped produce her 3× platinum album Heart of Stone which peaked at number 10 on the US Billboard 200, by contributing to the song “If I Could Turn Back Time”, which went to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. He also has produced Billy Idol’s top 10 hit “Cradle of Love” from the album Charmed Life, Tevin Campbell’s top 10 hit Back to the World, Guns N’ Roses’ number 1 hit “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, Terence Trent D’arby’s Symphony or Damn, Rod Stewart’s “Rhythm of My Heart”, Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears, and Richie Sambora’s “One Light Burning”. Porteils and Giles-Webb were competing against an up-and-coming Greek lyricist Alexandra Zakka, whose first works as a songwriter was her collaboration for the Eurovision. Al

Damien Ricketson

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Damien Ricketson (born 9 May 1973) is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music. He is best known for his innovative compositional practice and in his capacity as the co-founder and co-artistic director of Ensemble Offspring. He is currently an academic at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney of which he is also an alumnus. He holds a PhD from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he also teaches. Ricketson is the co-founder and former co-artistic director of the Sydney-based Ensemble Offspring – an organisation dedicated to the performance of new music. Ricketson’s music is characterised by colourful sound-worlds, novel forms and is often multisensory in nature. An early interest in Spectral music can be seen in his frequent exploration of unusual timbres and microtonal pitch structures. Some Shade of Blue, for example, features a newly invented string instrument in a just intonation system. Recent stylistic tendencies have moved away from an earlier abstract style, exemplified in works such as Ptolemy’s Onion, towards what the composer terms a more “corporeal” approach embracing tangible references to existing music and a highly physical perfo

Daniel Holdsworth (musician)

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Daniel Holdsworth is an Australian musician and composer. He is a co-creator of the music-theatre production, Tubular Bells for Two, releases music as a solo artist, and has performed in bands such as Darks Common Underground, The Maple Trail and The Saturns. He has also composed music for film, television, theatre and dance. Biography Daniel Holdsworth was born on 22 May 1981, in Penrith NSW, Australia, and has lived most of his life in the Blue Mountains. He began playing music at a young age and attended Blaxland High School where he was heavily involved in school productions and other music programs, performing several times at the Sydney Opera House. During this period he also began formal training as a classical guitarist. At the age of fifteen, Daniel began professional work within the music industry as a session musician, notably recording with Yothu Yindi for the closing ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta paralympics, and singing a duet for the same ceremony composed by Garry Hardman from Australian Screen Music. After high school, Holdsworth attended the University of Western Sydney where he studied with Bruce Crossman as a post-graduate in composition and music technology. Dur

Daryl McKenzie

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Daryl McKenzie (born 1962) is an Australian musical director, composer and trombonist. McKenzie has directed the Daryl McKenzie Jazz Orchestra since 1992 playing with artists such as Bill Watrous, James Morrison (musician), He was musical director for the television show Hey Hey It’s Saturday (Nine Network) from 1992 to 1999 also returning for the 2010 reunion shows. He has directed the Australian Film Institute Awards for SBS television and episodes of Dancing with the Stars (Australian TV series) and the Good Friday Appeal for the Seven Network and was musical director of Australia’s Got Talent Series 1. He has arranged for the television shows Australian Idol, Young Talent Time regularly adjudicates at the Melbourne School Bands Festival and has lectured in orchestration and arranging at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Defence Force School of Music (Australia). Discography Albums References External links *Daryl McKenzie at the Internet Movie Database *Daryl McKenzie at Jazz Australia *Daryl McKenzie at All About Jazz *Daryl McKenzie’s homepage *Daryl McKenzie Jazz Orchestra on Myspace

David Chesworth

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David Chesworth (born 1958, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom) is an Australian interdisciplinary artist, composer and sound designer. Known for his conceptual, and at times, minimalist music, he has worked solo, in post-punk groups (Essendon Airport, Whadya Want?), electronic music, contemporary ensembles and experimental performance. He has also created installation and video artworks with collaborator Sonia Leber, such as Zaum Tractor included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and This Is Before We Disappear From View commissioned by Sydney Biennale (2014). Works Chesworth’s creative output includes music, sound art, video, installation and performance, often in collaboration with other artists. His compositions and installations have been exhibited and performed at Ars Electronica, Festival d’automne à Paris, Edinburgh Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Sydney Biennale and the Venice Biennale. In 2012 he was artist in residence at the MONA Festival of Art and Music in Hobart which featured performances by the David Chesworth Ensemble and artworks made with collaborator Sonia Leber. Chesworth’s artworks and music often explore their own framing and context

David Lumsdaine

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David Newton Lumsdaine (31 October 1931 – 12 January 2024) was an Australian composer. Biography David Newton Lumsdaine was born on 31 October 1931. He studied at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music (as it was then known). He moved to England in 1953 and for a while shared a flat with fellow expatriate, the poet Peter Porter, with whom he collaborated on several projects including the cantata Annotations of Auschwitz (1964). In London he first studied composition with Mátyás Seiber and then at the Royal Academy of Music with Lennox Berkeley. In 1970 he took a lecturing position at Durham University. In 1981 he took a post as senior lecturer at King’s College London. He is published by The University of York Music Press and Universal Edition. In 1979 he married the composer Nicola LeFanu. David Lumsdaine died on 12 January 2024 at the age of 92. Works Lumsdaine disowned all works he composed before Annotations of Auschwitz (1964). His first acknowledged works were composed using a variety of pitch and rhythm techniques associated with serialism – techniques such as pitch rotation or permutation, and isorhythmic structures linking pitch and duration together. Central to all o

David Reeves (composer)

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David Reeves (born 1943) is an Australian composer, conductor and organist. He began his professional career as a concert organist in the early 1960s, turning to conducting and composition some ten years later. He is the composer of original modern music that bridges commercial and classical styles. ‘An original Australian Musical Trailblazer’ - Tommy Tycho OBE AM - Channel 9 - Star-Sound Recording Studios 1992 (Interview - Rod Henshaw Radio 4BC). Education and career Reeves was born in Sydney and educated at Shore School, where his musical promise was recognised early by George Faunce Allman who, with his wife Dora, taught him piano and organ as well as placing him in the choir of St James’ Church, Sydney, as a chorister. Reeves’ first organ appointment was as organist for Sydney Hospital Chapel, followed by his first professional engagement as Director of Music at the Garrison Church, Miller’s Point, both while he was still at school. Reeves studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Alexander Sverjensky (piano), George Faunce Allman (organ) and Norman Johnston (organ). He was awarded both of the overseas music scholarships available in the early sixties: the Alice Bryan

Dobe Newton

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dobe Newton OAM (born 14 July 1948) is an Australian musician and member of folk and country music group the Bushwackers from 1973. He co-wrote the patriotic song “I Am Australian” in 1987 with Bruce Woodley. For his service to the performing arts as an entertainer and advocate he was appointed to the Order of Australia in 2013. Career Dobe Newton was born on 14 July 1948 in Sydney. During the 1960s he acquired a lagerphone and tin whistle after hearing Irish folk group the Dubliners. He joined Australian bush band the Bushwackers (initially the Original Bushwhackers and Bullockies Bush Band) in 1973 on vocals and lagerphone. As the group’s longest-serving member he became their leader during the 1980s. Outside of performing Newton ran workshops and seminars on music in both Western Australia and Victoria. In 2013 he also became President of Country Music Association of Australia (CMAA) replacing John Williamson. As of March 2022 he still held that position. He was awarded an Order of Australia Medal on Australia Day, 2013 for “service to the performing arts as an entertainer and advocate.” Along with fellow Bushwacker Roger Corbett, Newton was added to the Australasian Country Mus

Don Kay (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Donald Henry Kay AM (born 25 January 1933) is an Australian classical composer. Kay was born on 25 January 1933 in Smithton, Tasmania. He attained a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Melbourne after which he taught music at Colac High School, Victoria, 1957–59. He then went on to teach music at Peckham Manor Comprehensive School for Boys, London, UK 1959-64 and was director of music there from 1962 to 1964. He studied composition privately at this time with Malcolm Williamson. Kay returned to Tasmania in 1965 with a young family of two daughters as lecturer of music at the Hobart Teachers College. the Hobart City Organist, in 1967. Active as a music tutor from the late 1960s to the middle 1970s with the Tasmanian Youth Theatre, Secheron House, Battery Point, Kay also composed a number of scores for production by the Tasmanian Puppet Theatre as well as Theatre Royal professional productions e.g. Richard II (Shakespeare), The Imaginary Invalid (Molière), the Wakefield Miracle Plays (Tasmania Festival, 1970) at that time. In 1984 Kay wrote an opera, The Golden Crane, with a libretto by Gwen Harwood. During these years Kay was also contributing to Creative Music and arts wo

Dorian Le Gallienne

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dorian Leon Marlois Le Gallienne (19 April 1915 – 27 July 1963) was an Australian composer, teacher and music critic. Biography Dorian Le Gallienne was born in Melbourne in 1915. His father, an actor, was born in France, and his mother, a pianist who had studied with G. W. L. Marshall-Hall, was the daughter of the Assistant Astronomer at the Melbourne Observatory. His parents separated in 1924, and his father lived in England thereafter. He attended Melbourne Church of England Grammar School. He was diagnosed with diabetes at age 16. After leaving school, he studied with A. E. H. Nickson at the Melbourne Conservatorium and with Arthur Benjamin and Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music in London in 1938. In 1939, he travelled in Europe with Richard Downing, a future Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), and with whom he later lived in Melbourne in a mud-brick house at Eltham. He returned to Australia, where he worked for the Commonwealth Department of Information in the overseas broadcasting service, later joining the ABC. He was employed as music critic for The Argus and The Age, both Melbourne newspapers, from 1950 until his death. In an article called

Dudley Simpson

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dudley George Simpson (4 October 1922 – 4 November 2017) was an Australian composer and conductor. He was the Principal Conductor of the Royal Opera House orchestra for three years and worked as a composer on British television. He worked on the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, for which he composed incidental music during the 1960s and 1970s. When Simpson died aged 95 in 2017, The Guardian wrote that he was “at his most prolific as the creator of incidental music for Doctor Who in the 1960s and 1970s, contributing to 62 stories over almost 300 episodes – more than any other composer.” Among his television work was the music for Moonstrike (1963), theme music for The Last of the Mohicans (1971), theme music for The Brothers (1972), The Tomorrow People (1973), Moonbase 3 (1973), The Ascent of Man (1973) and Blake’s 7 (1978). He also composed music for several plays from the BBC Television Shakespeare series. Early life and career Simpson was born in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern East. He learned piano as a child, served in New Guinea during World War II and then studied orchestration and composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. Sim

Dulcie Holland

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dulcie Sybil Holland AM (5 January 1913 – 21 May 2000) was an Australian composer and music educator. Best known for her contributions to music education through her involvement with the Australian Music Examinations Board, Holland has in recent decades gained greater recognition as a composer. She is now regarded by some critics as one of the more significant Australian composers of her generation. Education Holland was born in Sydney in 1913. She began taking piano lessons at the age of six, and attended Shirley School for Girls, known for its academic excellence. In 1929 she entered the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music (now the Sydney Conservatorium) to continue her studies. At the Conservatorium she studied piano with Grace Middenway and Frank Hutchens, cello with Gladstone Bell, and composition with Roy Agnew and Alfred Hill, eventually completing both the Diploma course (DSCM) and the Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music (LRSM) in 1933. In 1937, Holland travelled to London to study composition at the Royal College of Music with John Ireland. At the end of her first year, she won the Blumenthal Scholarship for composition, which entitled her to another three years o

Elena Kats-Chernin

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Elena Davidovna Kats-Chernin (born 4 November 1957) is an Australian composer and pianist, best known for her ballet Wild Swans. Early life and education Elena Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR (now the capital of independent Uzbekistan) and is Jewish. Her early life was spent in the Russian SSR after she moved to Yaroslavl at age 4, where she grew up and studied composition at the Sobinov Conservatory. At age 14, she was admitted to the Gnessin State Musical College, and subsequently moved to Moscow for her studies. She later migrated to Australia in 1975, continuing her studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, under Richard Toop (composition) and Gordon Watson (piano). She graduated from the Conservatorium in 1980. She also participated in the Darlinghurst underground theatre scene, with groups such as Cabaret Conspiracy, Fifi Lamour, Boom Boom La Burn and others, often under the name Elena Kats. After graduating, Kats-Chernin moved to Germany to study under Helmut Lachenmann. She remained in Europe for thirteen years, and became active in theatre and ballet, composing for state theatres in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg and Bochum. Career Since returning to Australia i

Emily Barker

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Emily Barker (born 2 December 1980) is an Australian singer-songwriter, musician and composer. Her music has featured as the theme to BBC dramas Wallander and The Shadow Line. With multi-instrumental trio the Red Clay Halo, she recorded four albums: Photos.Fires.Fables. (2006), Despite the Snow (2008), Almanac (2011), Dear River (2013), before commencing a solo career with The Toerag Sessions (2015), Sweet Kind of Blue (2017), A Dark Murmuration of Words (2020), and Flight Path Rhymes (2021). Other projects include Vena Portae (with Dom Coyote and Ruben Engzell), Applewood Road (with Amy Speace and Amber Rubarth), and Room 822 (2022) with Lukas Drinkwater. Career 2002–2005: The Low Country Emily travelled to the UK in 2002, and was first based in Cambridge where she collaborated with guitarist Rob Jackson. They formed a band called The Low Country which released two albums, Welcome to the-low-country (2003) and The Dark Road (2004), tracks from which enjoyed plays on John Peel’s BBC radio show. In 2005 Emily won Country Song of the Year and Regional Song of the Year awards at the annual West Australian Music Songwriting Awards. 2006–2013: Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo In 2006, B

Eric Gross

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Eric Gross AM (16 September 192617 April 2011) was an Austrian–Australian pianist, composer and teacher. Biography Gross was born in Vienna and emigrated to England in 1938. From the age of fourteen, he worked as a pianist in bands and orchestras. He studied at Trinity College of Music, with Wilfrid Dunwell (piano), and the University of Aberdeen, with (among others) Reginald Barrett-Ayres, and where he received an MA in 1957 (; ). Following professional engagements in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and New Caledonia, he settled in Sydney in 1958. Initially teaching at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, he joined the staff of the department of music at the University of Sydney in 1960 and remained there until retiring in 1991 as associate professor of music. In 1989 he was visiting professor at the University of Guyana. He was president of the Fellowship of Australian Composers, and from 1981 to 1984 he was also treasurer and executive board member of the Asian Composers’ League. Apart from teaching, Gross was active as composer, arranger and conductor. He received numerous commissions for film scores for Film Australia and TV scores for Screen Gems Columbia, as well as numerous commis

Ernest Hutcheson

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ernest Hutcheson (20 July 1871 – 9 February 1951) was an Australian pianist, composer and teacher. Biography Hutcheson was born in Melbourne, and toured there as a child prodigy at the age of five. He later travelled to Leipzig and entered the Leipzig Conservatory at the age of fourteen to study with Carl Reinecke, Bernhard Stavenhagen (a pupil of Franz Liszt) and Bruno Zwintscher. He was part of the London music circuit in 1896 and 1897. Prior to the outbreak of World War I he taught at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, but in 1914 he settled in New York City, where he made his US debut. He is believed to have been the first pianist to play three concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven in a single concert: his performances of Beethoven’s third, fourth and fifth with the New York Symphony Orchestra in the Aeolian Hall in 1919. He became a member of the faculty at the Juilliard School, and successively Dean (1926–1937) and President (1937–1945) of the school. At Juilliard, he championed the use of radio musical broadcasts in education. He taught many first-rate students. One of these many students was Mary Ann Craft, who later taught the prodigy Edgar Coleman during his formative years. T

Esther Rofe

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Esther Rofe (14 March 1904 26 February 2000 ) was an Australian musician and composer. Biography Esther Rofe was born in 1904 in Melbourne, Australia. Rofe studied piano with Harold C. Smith and Ada Freeman During World War II Rofe worked at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), and the Colgate-Palmolive Radio Unit in Sydney where she began arranging and composing music. Rofe began composing for ballet in 1943. The Esther Rofe Songbook was published in Melbourne in December 1999. Rofe and her sister Edith moved to Southport where Rofe lived and worked for twenty years by the sea. Rofe never married, but fostered a child, Carden James Rofe. Carden had two sons – Hamer Rofe and Malcolm Rofe. Rofe died on 26 February 2000 The Esther Rofe Award was established in her honor at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Honors and awards *1993 Composer-of-Honour in the School of Music Conservatorium at Monash University. *1998 Australia Day Citizen of the Year award from the City of Boroondara *1998 Became a represented composer at the Australian Music Centre (AMC). Compositions (incomplete list) Piano solo *Choral Prelude II (1927) *Echo de Vienne *Mathinna (1954) ballet choreogr

Felix Werder

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Felix Werder AM (24 February 19223 May 2012 ) was a German-born Australian composer of classical and electronic music, and also a noted critic and educator. The son of a distinguished liturgical composer, he composed all his life. His published and recorded music includes symphonies, chamber music for all combinations, solo concerti, choral works and operas. Biography Werder was born in Berlin, Germany, as Felix Bischofswerder, the son of the composer Boaz Bischofswerder, who was a member of Arnold Schoenberg’s circle. He studied Fine Arts and Architecture in London before arriving in Australia in 1940 on the HMT Dunera, along with his father, leaving Germany because of their Jewish heritage. They were interned at a camp in Tatura, Victoria for the duration of World War II. In 1943, he wrote his first symphony. In 1946 his father died. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Werder wrote seven operas, which were popularly received. His opera Private was commissioned for television by the ABC and was broadcast in 1969. He also wrote works for Deutsche Oper Berlin and Opera Australia among others. Werder lived in Melbourne and his teaching included influential courses in electronic music a

Finn Robertson

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Finn Buster Robertson (born 13 September 1981) is an Australian front-end web developer who was previously a composer and music producer. Before founding his independent front end development studio based in Melbourne, he grew up in country Victoria learning to play piano, guitar, and trumpet before discovering the sounds that were possible to make with a computer. From 2000 to 2002 he made early experiments in electronic and acoustic composition at RMIT University’s Media Arts under Philip Brophy and Philip Samartzis. His works integrate electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. Career Robertson worked in-house as Audio Director and Lead Composer for three years at Torus Games in Melbourne over which time he created the soundtracks and oversaw the Sound Design of over 10 commercially released games including * Scooby-Doo! and the Spooky Swamp for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment * Scooby-Doo! First Frights for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment * Zoo Hospital Wii for Majesco * Monster Jam: Urban Assault for Activision * Monster Jam for Activision * Shrek Smash n’ Crash Racing for Activision * Spider-Man: Battle for New York for Activision. Referen

Florence Maude Ewart

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Florence Maude Ewart (16 November 1864c.8 November 1949) was an English violinist, music educator and composer who lived and worked in Australia. Biography Florence Donaldson was born in Kentish Town, London, the daughter of accountant Frederick William Donaldson and his wife Elizabeth Lewis. Ewart studied violin with John Carrodus and made her début as a violinist at age 14 at the Albert Hall, London. She won one of the first twelve Birmingham scholarships to the South Kensington National Training School, later the Royal College of Music, and continued her studies in Leipzig and Berlin with Joseph Joachim. After completing her studies, she worked in Birmingham as a conductor, violinist and music lecturer. In December 1898, she married Alfred James Ewart, whom she had met in Leipzig, at the parish Church of St. Paul, Oxford. The couple settled in Birmingham and had two sons born in 1900 and 1902. In 1906 the Ewart family moved to Melbourne, Australia, and a rheumatic condition ended Florence’s career as a violinist. In 1907 she served as co-conductor for the first Australian Women’s Work Exhibition, and won first prize for her composition “God Guide Australia”, an anthem with words

Fred Werner

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fred Werner born Gottfried W Werner was an Australian composer, music teacher. He was possibly born near Berlin where he attended the prestigious Stern Conservatory and studied under Polish composer Theodor Kullak. He migrated to Coolabah near Dubbo in New South Wales, Australia around 1890. In 1902 he married Emma Durrell and had a son Charles. In 1910 he was appointed to the Staff of Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he taught keyboard and held several recitals. In 1915 he left teaching, possibly due to wartime Australian racism, and in 1916 he became licensee at the Coolabah Hotel His best known student was Kate Rooney who succeeded in tours of London and USA Works * Six pieces for piano for student instruction * Stray leaves (including ‘Bacarolle’ and ‘minuet’ intended for ballet students) * Octave studies for convent schools * Romance * Desiderata * Ǽnone Waltz * Berceuse * Aubade * Three songs References

Frederick Ellard

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Frederick Ellard (1824–1874) was an Australian classical music composer. Visiting Hungarian composer Miska Hauser was sufficiently impressed to dedicate an Australian publication in Ellard’s honour. Works * 1842 Sydney Corporation Quadrilles * 1846 I think of thee * 1850 Hayes Quadrille * 1854 Australian Bird Waltz * 1854 Morceau de salon : sur Lucrʹece * 1855 Crimea Recordings * Great Britain Polka * Australian Ladies- National Country Dances * Sydney Railroad Galop * Australian Quadrilles * I think of Thee References

George Dreyfus

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Dreyfus AM (born 22 July 1928) is an Australian contemporary classical, film and television composer. Early life and orchestral career Dreyfus was born to a Jewish family in Elberfeld, Wuppertal, Germany. He was the younger of two sons born to Alfred Dreyfus and Hilde Ransenberg. Growing up, his family had what he described as “pots of money, cars, Kindermädchen nannies and holidays in Switzerland and Czechoslovakia”. However, due to the Nazi persecution of Jews, the family was forced to move to Berlin in 1935 and then left Germany entirely. He and his brother arrived in Melbourne in July 1939 and began attending boarding school; his parents followed in December. At Melbourne High School, Dreyfus conducted the school choir and played clarinet in the school orchestra. He enrolled in the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music as a bassoonist, and then in 1948 toured for a year playing Italian opera with the J. C. Williamson touring orchestra. Dreyfus subsequently played for several years in the house orchestra of His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth. He was reputedly fired from the orchestra by the Australian conductor and composer Clive Douglas. A grant enabled him in 1955 to continue his

George Ellis (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Ellis (born 12 February 1964) is an Australian conductor, composer and orchestrator. He presents concerts for international events with a broad range of styles from classical to pop/rock and jazz as well as presenting orchestral concerts for young audiences. He also lectures in conducting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and is a regular presenter of Sonic Journey for ABC Radio Sydney’s program with Simon Marnie. Early years George Ellis was born in Penrith in Western Sydney to Greek-Australian parents. for which he wrote songs and played bass guitar. The band was signed to Deluxe Records and were stablemates of INXS. The band played support for groups including Cold Chisel, Mental As Anything, Moving Pictures, The Angels and The Church. Education Ellis completed the Higher School Certificate at Fort Street High School in Sydney’s inner west. After The Affections disbanded, he then pursued the study of classical music full-time at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (1984). Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Music Education as Student of the Year (1987), he travelled to the USA where he studied composition at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh (1988) and then conduc

George English (tenor)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Philip John Engisch (1882 –1972 but later resided in Melbourne. On 10 May 1939 he was before the bankruptcy court in Melbourne. In June he was transferred by the ABC to Sydney. He also conducted the Victorian Postal Institute Choir. Compositions Both Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 2 by George English were performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under his direction at the Melbourne Centenary Celebrations He also composed several songs. *Six negro spirituals arranged as part songs (SATB) Sources * References

George Palmer (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Alfred Palmer (born 1947) is an Australian classical music composer and a former Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Early life and education Palmer was born in a British military hospital in Egypt in 1947 while his parents, recently demobilised from the British Army, were awaiting a ship to take them to a new life in Australia. Palmer’s family arrived in Sydney when he was three months old and he has lived there ever since. He received a Jesuit education at Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview, with particular emphasis on the Classics, languages and history. He graduated in Arts and Law from University of Sydney in 1970. Palmer studied piano from the age of 10. His most influential teachers were pianists Frank Warbrick and Neta Maughan. Palmer’s interests always lay in composition rather than performance, and he began writing music at an early age. Law career After graduating, Palmer joined a city law firm where he specialised in commercial law. He developed expertise in oil and mineral exploration law at a time when the resources boom was just beginning in Australia. Within two years of graduation, he became a partner of his law firm. He became a barrister in 19

George Selwyn English

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Selwyn English (16 September 1912 – 8 October 1980) was an Australian composer. Like Roy Agnew and Raymond Hanson, he was overshadowed by the Australian avant-garde of the 1960s. and a Wind Quintet (1969). He also wrote at least two symphonies: an undated in A minor and a Sinfonia (1947 or 1967). *For a Royal Occasion (1952), overture for full orchestra *Song for a Crowning (1953), text by Elizabeth Riddell *The Australian Dingo (1958), documentary film score *Death of a Wombat (1959) for narrator and 10 instruments *Botany Bay 1770 (1960), overture *Chiaroscuro (1966) for string trio *String Quartet (1966, inedited) for 3 recorders (Pastorale – Wayfarers – Shepherd’s song) *The First Waratah for narrator, wind quintet and percussion (1972) *Power with precision, documentary film score *All manner of trains, documentary film score *Fantasia for orchestra *Coach and horses for orchestra *All school’s songbook for unison and 2-part voices and piano Recordings * (LP, mono, 1961) English: The Death of a Wombat; Robert Hughes: Sinfonietta. – Sydney Symphony Orchestra, cond. English (1) and Nicolai Malko (2). – RCA L16233 References Sources * John Carmody. English, George Selwyn (

George Tibbits (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Richard Tibbits (7 November 19336 July 2008) was an Australian composer and architect. Tibbits was born in Boulder, Western Australia, to a family of mining prospectors, and when his father returned wounded from the First World War, the family moved to Colac, Victoria, to take up dairying. He studied architecture at the University of Melbourne, and eventually taught urban studies and architectural history there and established the urban studies program. He initiated the first heritage conservation study, the Beechworth Historical Reconstruction Project. He was also prominent in opposing the former Housing Commission’s slum reclamation project in inner Melbourne. He was not formally trained in music and worked outside of the main channels of art music production in Australia. At age 16 he wrote his first major work, Otway Ranges Symphony. His early works show the influence of his interest in the music of Indonesia, as well as American modernists such as Milton Babbitt and John Cage. He would often jot down pieces of tunes while travelling on public transport. Late in the 1950s, he concentrated on works depicting what he referred to as the ‘brutalist’ aspects of urban civiliza

Georges Lentz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Georges Lentz is a contemporary composer and sound artist born in Luxembourg in 1965 and that country’s internationally best known composer. Since 1990, he has been living in Sydney, Australia. Despite his relatively small output and his reclusiveness, he is also considered one of Australia’s leading composers on the world stage. His music is inspired by the starry night sky in the Australian Outback and by Aboriginal art. He is the creator of the Cobar Sound Chapel. Life Born in Luxembourg City on 22 October 1965, Lentz grew up in the Luxembourg town of Echternach. He studied at the Luxembourg Conservatoire and later at the Paris Conservatoire (1982–1986) and the Musikhochschule Hannover (1986–1990). In 1989, he began working on a cycle of compositions titled Caeli enarrant…. His music is being recognised increasingly around the world, with performances at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall London, Carnegie Hall New York, Kennedy Center Washington, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Sydney Opera House. Many orchestras have performed his works, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Hal

Georgia Scott

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Georgia Scott is an Australian composer, orchestrator and arranger. She graduated with honours from the Royal College of Music, London and completed her Master of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2020 where she was supported by the Doris Burnett-Ford scholarship as part of the 2018-2019 Composing Women Program. Georgia was the recipient of the 2021 Australia Council National Arts and Disability Award for Young Artist. She has worked with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Chamber Opera, The Australian Ballet, Moorambilla Voices, Gondwana Junior, Australian World Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Georgia’s notable works include “Her Dark Marauder” which was performed by the Sydney Chamber Opera at Carriageworks and premiered online in 2020, and was a finalist in the 2021 APRA AMC Art Music Awards for Dramatic Work of the Year. References

Gillian Whitehead

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Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead (born 23 April 1941) is a New Zealand composer. She is of Māori Ngāi Te Rangi descent. Her Māori heritage has been an important influence on her composing. Early life Whitehead was born in Hamilton in 1941. The daughter of Ivan and Marjorie Whitehead, she is of Ngāi Te Rangi descent. Her father was a music teacher and conductor of the Waipu Choral Society and her mother played the piano. Education She studied at the University of Auckland from 1959 to 1962, and Victoria University of Wellington in 1963, graduating BMus(Hons) in 1964. She then studied composition at the University of Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe from 1964–65, graduating MMus in 1966. That same year she attended a composition course given by Peter Maxwell Davies and in 1967 travelled to England to continue studying with him. She took up the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1992. From 1998 to 2003 she was president of the Composers Association of New Zealand. In 2005–2006 she was the Composer in Residence at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University. She was the first Composer in Residence to stay at the Lilburn Residence. In 2009 Whitehead was one of the 2009

Graeme Koehne

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Graeme John Koehne (born 3 August 1956), is an Australian composer and music educator. He is best known for his orchestral and ballet scores, which are characterised by direct communicative style and embrace of tertian harmony. His orchestral trilogy Unchained Melody, Powerhouse, and Elevator Music makes allusions to Hollywood film score traditions, cartoon music, popular Latin music and other dance forms. Life and career Koehne was born in Adelaide. He completed his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in that city, studying composition with Richard Meale – a pupil of Winifred Burston, who had been a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. In 1982 he won the Young Composers Prize at that year’s Adelaide Festival, gaining him national attention for his orchestral work Rainforest. In 1984, Koehne was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to work at the School of Music, Yale University. Here he studied with Louis Andriessen and Jacob Druckman. For two years of the fellowship he also took private lessons with Virgil Thomson. Until recently he also chaired the Music Board of the Australia Council and was a board member of the council. Graeme is married to former mode

Greg Schiemer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gregory Marcellus Schiemer (born 16 January 1949 in Dunedoo) is an Australian electronic music composer, instrument builder and teacher. His artistic preoccupations include creative engagement with technology, music created for non-expert performance and intercultural-interfaith dialogue. Background and training Greg Schiemer was born on 16 January 1949 in Dunedoo, New South Wales. He attended Holy Cross College, Ryde (1961 to 1963), and finished high school in the Passionist minor seminary (from 1964) at St Ives and at the Sydney Technical College, Ultimo in 1968. He completed a B.Mus at Sydney University in 1972 where he studied composition with Peter Sculthorpe who introduced him to the music of Asia and the instruments of Harry Partch. Through David Ahern, he discovered experimental music and the work of Cornelius Cardew and John Cage. and Arthur Spring. Between 1972 and 1975, together they built some of the earliest electronic music systems that respond to dance movement. Between 1976 and 1981, Schiemer worked for Digital Equipment Australia, a division of Digital Equipment Corporation, initially in computer field service and later as senior design technician. In 1999 he compl

Guy Gross

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Guy Gross is an Australian film and television composer. He is known most for writing the award-winning music for the Australian science fiction series Farscape and the international hit film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He also composed for the animated television series Blinky Bill and Dumb Bunnies. He has 91 credits as screen composer. Personal Gross began film scoring while studying classical composition at the Conservatorium High School in Sydney, Australia. He is the son of film producers Yoram and Sandra Gross. From 2012 to 2017, he was President of the Australian Guild of Screen Composers. In 2015, he founded Church Street Studios. Filmography * Composer (90 credits) * Producer (1 credit) * Music Department (14 credits) * Director (3 credits) * Soundtrack (10 credits) * Writer (2 credits) * Actor (1 credit) * Camera and Electrical Department (1 credit) * Sound Department (1 credit) Films * 2022 **How to Please a Woman (composer) * 2021 **Jez: A Letter for Life (composer) ** Birdsville or Bust (composer) * 2020 **Picturing Home (composer) ** Le Miroir (composer) * 2019 ** Broken Dreams (composer) * 2018 ** Treetment (composer) ** Swinging Safari (compose

Helen Gifford

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Helen Margaret Gifford OAM (born 5 September 1935) is an Australian composer. On Australia Day (26 January) 1996 she was appointed to the Medal of the Order of Australia, “in recognition of service to music as a composer”. At the APRA Music Awards of 2016 she won the category “Distinguished Services to Australian Music”. Biography Helen Gifford was born in Melbourne, Australia, of Scots and Cornish heritage. Gifford attended Tintern Junior School and Melbourne Girls Grammar, and then the University of Melbourne Conservatorium on a Commonwealth Scholarship. She studied with Roy Shepherd and Dorian Le Gallienne, graduating with a Bachelor of Music in 1958. She won the Dorian Le Gallienne Award in 1965, a Senior Composer’s Fellowship in 1973, and served as composer-in-residence with the Australian Opera beginning in 1974. In the 1960s and early ’70s, her music showed the influence of travel to India and Indonesia. At the Australia Day Honours in 1996 she was appointed to the Medal of the Order of Australia, with a citation, “In recognition of service to music as a composer.” At the APRA Music Awards of 2016 she won the Art Music Award category, Distinguished Services to Australian Mus

Hermann T. Schrader

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hermann Theodor Schrader (1860 – 9 July 1934) was a South Australian pianist, violinist and cellist, who had a later academic career in Victoria. History Hermann was born in Adelaide, South Australia the second son of Heinrich Ludwig Christian Schrader (4 February 1832 – 21 February 1880) and his wife Wilhelmine “Menna” Schrader, née Oelmann (c. 1822–1910), who married in 1857. Hermann Schrader sen. arrived in Adelaide from Brunswick, Germany in 1857 and was from 1861 landlord of the Black Horse Hotel in Leigh Street, a singing teacher at the Deutsche Schule run by Leschen and Niehuus in Wakefield Street, and bandmaster with the Adelaide Regiment, Volunteer Force, then had his own private band. He played the cornet, contrabass tuba and cornopean. He also served on occasion as court interpreter. Hermann was a student at the Deutsche Schule, Wakefield Street, followed by John Whinham’s North Adelaide Grammar School. Around 1878 he left for Germany to study music under Hans von Bülow at the Königliche Musikschule in Munich, returning shortly after his father’s early and unexpected death. He made his debut concert appearance in July 1880 at a reunion of the Liedertafel Society at the G

Holly Harrison

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Holly Phillippa Harrison (born 1988) is an Australian composer based in Western Sydney. Early life and education Harrison grew up in the Hawkesbury region West of Sydney. She was awarded a music scholarship to attend St Paul’s Grammar School for trumpet performance. During high school she began playing drum kit, performing with rock, punk and post-rock bands. Harrison graduated from Western Sydney University School of Music with a Bachelor of Music, First Class Honours, and was awarded the University Medal. She then went on to complete a Doctorate of Creative Arts in composition at Western Sydney University. Career Harrison’s music is frequently performed across Australia and internationally. In Australia she has worked with leading orchestras including Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, as well as chamber ensembles including Ensemble Offspring, Omega Ensemble, and Australian String Quartet. Internationally, she has collaborated with ensembles including Eighth Blackbird, Alarm Will Sound, Goldmund Quartett, Orkest de Ereprijs. In 2017, Harrison’s Lobster Tale

Hooper Brewster-Jones

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Hooper Josse Brewster-Jones (1887–1949) was a musician, composer, teacher and music critic, born near Orroroo on the Black Rock Plain, South Australia. His parents were William Arthur Jones (c. 1855–1947), a school master, and Rebecca née Williams. He attended school at Armagh and Bute, where he was taught by his father, including music. In June 1896, he performed a duet with Rebie Jones and then his own composition, “The Bute March” – he celebrated his ninth birthday a few days later. He left home at age 13 to board in Adelaide. He returned to Adelaide in 1909 to teach piano, composition and singing. In the following year, in June, he married Gerta Homburg, an amateur singer and authority on German lieder. During 1916, Brewster-Jones composed an opera in three acts. A correspondent from The Advertiser described the work, “The subject is an old Irish tragedy, ‘Deirdre’, and he has adopted a prose libretto. The ‘solo’, requirements are two sopranos, tenor, baritone, and bass. No chorus is introduced.” His works include an opera The Nightingale and the Rose from The Happy Prince and Other Tales. He worked with the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a pianist, radio lecturer and co

Hugo Alpen

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Hugo Alpen (26 October 184220 June 1917) was a German-born Australian composer, choral conductor and singing teacher. Early life Born on 26 October 1842 in Kellinghusen, (then part of Denmark), Alpen came to Australia in 1858 at the age of 16. Career After spending several years in Melbourne, Alpen was appointed director of the Vocal Philharmonic Society in the New South Wales town of Tumut in 1862, and from 1865 was based in Albury. He moved to Sydney in 1880 to work as a singing master for the newly established Department of Public Instruction (now the Department of Education), teaching at Fort Street and Hurlstone teacher training colleges. In 1884 he was appointed Superintendent of Music in the department. He advocated enlightened modern methods of music teaching for school children, emphasising aural development and sight-singing, and in 1897 he published a treatise, Practical Hints for the Teaching of Vocal Music in Public Schools. In the earliest precursors of today’s Schools Spectaculars, Alpen led massed student choirs in gala performances, often including his own compositions. His Commemoration Ode (1899) celebrated Fort Street School’s Golden Jubilee. At the celebrations

Iain Grandage

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Iain Andrew Grandage is an Australian composer and music director, best known for his compositions for theatre, dance and concert. In May 2018, the Perth Festival appointed Grandage as artistic director. Early life Grandage initially lived in Brisbane, before moving to Perth when he was seven. Grandage studied at the UWA School of Music (now the UWA Conservatorium of Music) as a cellist, and also studied composition with Roger Smalley. Awards and honours He has received the Helpmann Award for Best Original Score multiple times, for play Cloudstreet in 2002, play The Secret River in 2013, dance work When Time Stops in 2014, opera The Rabbits (with Kate Miller-Heidke) in 2015, and concert work Satan Jawa (with Rahayu Supanggah) in 2017. Grandage received the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for an individual in 2012. He delivered one of the 2024 Boyer Lectures. In the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, Grandage was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, for significant service to the arts as a composer and artistic director. References

Ian Cugley

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Ian Cugley (22 June 19454 November 2010) was an Australian composer. Biography Early life He was born in Melbourne in 1945. He gained early prominence with two orchestral works, Pan, the Lake and Prelude for Orchestra, which were performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1967 and subsequently recorded on EMI. His career after then was less spectacular, and he had a propensity for hiding away and concentrating on composition without seeming overly concerned with performance. He rarely attended performances of his music unless they happened to be close at hand. Career He lectured in Music and Computing at the University of Tasmania for many years, including a period in charge of the small Music department there, and was a percussionist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. During his time in Tasmania he wrote mainly chamber music, usually on commission for bodies or performers outside Tasmania. A notable exception is the Violin Concerto commissioned by the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music for Jan Sedivka, who was soloist at the first performance in 1980 (with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Patrick Thomas). Cugley left Tasmania

Ian Keith Harris

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Ian Keith Harris (24 June 1936 – 3 April 2024) was an Australian composer of classical music, arranger, oboist, critic and music educator. Life and career Ian Keith Harris was born in Melbourne, living there for the first 26 years of his life. He started the piano at the age of five, playing cornet in his school band, then violin for a couple of years at high school, and later was a school pianist. In 1952, he began his Bachelor of Music degree at Melbourne University Conservatorium of Music, taking piano as chief study and oboe as second. Later, he changed to oboe as his chief study and studied composition with Jiři Tancibudek and Arthur Nickson. He was soon in demand as a freelance orchestral musician, arranger and copyist, working in a very eclectic mix of musical spheres from arrangement for television and various theatrical shows to playing in opera, ballet, chamber music and symphony orchestras. He was a founding member of the Glendenian Trio (flute, oboe, bassoon), which gave regular broadcasts over several years. The trio was another area in which his arrangement skills were frequently employed. He served some years as an oboist for J. C. Williamson theatres, playing musica

Ian Munro (pianist)

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Ian Munro (born 1963) is an Australian pianist, composer, and music educator. His career has taken him to many countries in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia. Early life and education Ian Munro attended Scotch College in Melbourne for his high school education. He then attended the Victorian College of the Arts (1981–83). His early piano training was in Melbourne with Rodney Hurst, Marta Rostas (a pupil of Béla Bartók), Deirdre Vadas and Roy Shepherd (a pupil of Alfred Cortot) and he had further study in Vienna, London and Italy with Franz Zettl, Noretta Conci, Guido Agosti, and Michele Campanella. ) and he also has a special interest in new music. He has premiered or commissioned works by Peter Sculthorpe, Elena Kats-Chernin (her second piano concerto), Gordon Kerry, Ann Ghandar, Raffaele Marcellino, Ross Edwards and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, from whom he commissioned the piano cycle Silhouettes. These pieces were dedicated to significant 20th-century composers such as Debussy, Gershwin, Ives, Ravel, Schnittke, Stravinsky – and John Cage, which in true Cage style consisted of 33 seconds of silence. During his time in Hobart he created and played a series of four recitals,

Jennifer Fowler

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Jennifer Joan Fowler (born 14 April 1939) is a British composer of Australian birth. She was born in Bunbury, Australia, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Bachelor of Music from the School of Music, University of Western Australia in 1960 and 1967, respectively. During her time at University of Western Australia, she won several composition prizes and received the University Convocation Awards for outstanding results. While a student, her pieces were performed in the Festival of Perth and broadcast by ABC. She spent a year working at the Electronic Music Studios of the University of Utrecht in 1968. In 1969 she settled in London and works as a free-lance composer. Fowler married computer programmer Bruce Paterson and has two sons. Honors and awards *1970 Prize from the Academy of the Arts in Berlin *1971 Joint winner of the Radcliffe Award of Great Britain *1975 1st prize in the International Competition for Women Composers in Mannheim, Germany *2001 Eat and Be Eaten won a High Commendation at the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Awards *2003 Miriam Gideon prize from the International Association of Women in Music *2006 2nd prize in the Christopher Bodman Memorial Competiti

Jim Cotter (composer)

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Clive James Cotter (born 1948 in Geelong, Australia) is an Australian composer currently based in Canberra, Australia. His career has largely been in music for theater, film, and radio. Cotter began his career as Music Director and resident composer for the Canberra Repertory Theatre and has collaborated extensively with Australian playwright Dorothy Hewett, most notably writing the music for the musical theater piece The Man From Mukinupin and for the children’s play Golden Valley. Cotter also wrote the music for Merlinda Bobis’ radio play “Rita’s Lullaby”, which won the Prix Italia in 1998. Cotter began his musical career playing trumpet in trad-jazz bands in Melbourne as a teenager. He moved to Canberra in the late 1960s with his family and continued performing in this tradition but gradually drifted towards more modern forms of jazz and rock and roll. He performed with the Canberra bands, The Bitter Lemons, The Firing Squad, Family Portrait as well as in more experimental collectives with musicians Colin Hoorweg, Dave Kain, Mitch Burns, Christian Wojtowicz and John Tucker. In the early 1970s, Cotter’s increasing interest in contemporary music led him to studies with Larry Sitsk

John Carmichael (composer)

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John Carmichael (born 5 October 1930) is an Australian pianist, composer and music therapist who has long been resident in the United Kingdom. One of his best known works is the Concierto folklorico for piano and string orchestra. His works for piano form much of his musical output, although he composes for many other instruments. His work is described as expressive and lyrical. Biography John Carmichael was born in Melbourne in 1930. He studied piano with Margaret Schofield and in 1947 won a scholarship to the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where his teacher was Raymond Lambert. He also studied composition with Dorian Le Gallienne. Moving to Europe, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Marcel Ciampi and in London with Arthur Benjamin and Anthony Milner, a pupil of Mátyás Seiber. He wrote the music for Britain’s Festival of Women during this period. He also wrote reviews and critiques for music magazines. Carmichael was a pioneer in the field of music therapy; he developed music teaching and music appreciation projects at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Netherden Mental Hospital in Surrey, and worked for the Council for Music Therapy in London. Between 1958 and 1963, he was

John Henry Thomas

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John Henry Thomas (born 24 November 1854, in Truro, Cornwall, died 22 February 1928, in Moonta) was an Australian composer, editor, and conductor. He is known for composing several Cornish Christmas Carols and the 1897 publication of his book The Christmas Welcome, was engraved in Germany by C.G. Röder, Leipzig. John Henry Thomas’ father, John Thomas, was a miner in Cornwall and arrived in South Australia in 1885 with his wife, Catherine Jacka after the mining boom had occurred due to the discovery of copper in 1861 in Moonta. The mine became prosperous and many Cornish miners followed after an advertisement by the South Australian Government. In 1875 Moonta was the second largest town after the capital, Adelaide, with a population of 12,000 people. Thus the miners made an important contribution to the Australian economy and were crucial to the prospering of Moonta and the surrounding district. They brought their culture and traditions with them including their music which was pivotal in keeping their Cornish culture alive. This area became a virtual Cornish enclave and was named “Little Cornwall”. John Henry Thomas helped to maintain the Cornish culture through his compositions an

Jonathan Little (composer)

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Jonathan David Little FCLM, FISM, FRSA (born 1965 in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian contemporary classical composer, arts educator and author on cultural history based in the UK and Australia. In 2008, his first CD was voted one of the top recordings of the year by US Fanfare magazine (“The Want List 2008”). He was subsequently featured in a news article in Musical Opinion in early 2009. As a composer, he first came to prominence in America in 2006 when The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) ran an article on him having five of his works accepted for recording (2004–07) by the US-headquartered French contemporary music label ERM (Editions de la Rue Margot), aimed at showcasing international contemporary composers. He was awarded the Collard Fellowship of the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 2011, and in 2012 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was appointed inaugural Professor of Composition and Music History at the University of Chichester in 2017, and Emeritus Professor from 2019. Music and background He studied composition, Performance and Musicology with Peter Dennison at the University of Melbourne, where he won the Lady T

Jonathan Mills (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sir Jonathan Mills (born 21 March 1963) is an Australian composer and festival director. He was born and raised in Sydney and has dual Australian and UK citizenship. His work includes operas, an oratorio, a ballet, song cycles, concertos, and chamber music. He has directed a number of arts festivals in Australia, and from 2006 to 2014 he was director of the Edinburgh International Festival. Biography Jonathan Edward Harland Mills was born in Sydney on 21 March 1963. He has Scottish roots, his maternal grandfather having been a Scot from Partick. His father Frank Harland Mills was a heart surgeon. He studied under Peter Sculthorpe. Mills was a research fellow and composer-in-residence at RMIT University, Melbourne, between 1992 and 1997. He graduated as Master of Architecture at RMIT in 1999, focusing on acoustic design and the role of sound in the built environment. In 2001 he wrote Sandakan Threnody, an oratorio for tenor, choir, and orchestra. It is based on the real-life story of the 2,345 Australian and British prisoners of war who in 1945 were sent on a series of death marches from the Japanese camp in Sandakan, Borneo – only six would survive. It was revised and premiered as

Judith Clingan

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Judith Ann Clingan (born 19 January 1945) is an Australian composer, conductor, performer and music educator. Since 1997, she has been the Director of Wayfarers Australia (formerly Waldorf Wayfarers) Australia Wide Choir. Early life Clingan was born on 19 January 1945, in Sydney, New South Wales to Victor Lawrence Clingan and Marian Dorothy Tasker. She was educated at Hornsby Girls’ High School, the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University (ANU). Clingan moved to Canberra with her family in 1963, and graduated from the ANU in 1966. In 1967 she founded the Canberra Children’s Choir and began composing music for SSA voices. She studied voice, bassoon and composition at the Canberra School of Music (now ANU School of Music) She studied music education at the Zoltan Kodaly Pedagogical Institute of Music in Kecskemet (Hungary) from 1981–1982. Career In 1969 she founded the Summer Music Schools for Children, known as the Young Music Society from 1975. In 1983 she founded Gaudeamus Music and Performing Arts (now Music For Canberra). She was the director of Gaudeamus for eleven years and during this time she remained a composer, writing

Julian Cochran

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Julian Cochran (born 1974) is an English-born Australian composer. Cochran’s earlier works show stylistic influences from Impressionist music and his later works are more noticeably influenced by Classical music and folk music of Eastern Europe. The piano works include nineteen preludes, seven large Fantasia works (including Sarmatian Dances, Dagda’s Harp, Scherzo da Fiaba, The Wind Sylph and the Dryad and the three movement work Sul Settimo), five mazurkas, two scherzi, six Romanian Dances, Animation Suite (comprising Tin Sentinel, Clockwork Doll, Wooden Dolls (Matreshki) and Flydian Galop), Animal Scenes (comprising Butterfly Dance, Hedgehog, Goat’s Dance and Tail-chasing Kitten), Toccata & Fire Dance, the impressionistic work Maelstrom, three waltzes titled Valses, a cycle of five works titled Pegasus’ Travels and Dances of Noble Sentiment (comprising Minuet, Courante, Rondeau and Forlana). Related to the piano works are seven pieces published for concert harp. Cochran also wrote orchestral and chamber music including the four-part work for soprano and piano Night Scenes, the trio for violin, cor anglais and concert harp or piano Artemis, the trio for violin, cello and piano Peg

Kate Moore (composer)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kate Moore (born 1979) is an Australian composer currently based in the Netherlands. Moore was born in Oxfordshire, England, and has studied with Australian composers Larry Sitsky, Jim Cotter, and Michael Smetanin; Dutch composers Louis Andriessen, Martijn Padding, Diderik Wagenaar and Gilius van Bergeijk; and attended summer schools including Bang on a Can hosted by David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon and Tanglewood hosted by John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi and Helen Grime. In 2022 Moore was awarded the Gieskes-Strijbis Podiumprijs. In June 2017, Moore became the first woman to win the Matthijs Vermeulen Award from the Netherlands Funds for the Performing Arts FPK for her work The Dam, in its version for British ensemble Icebreaker. List of works Major works * Frieda’s Reis, Cello Concerto (2023) Commissioned by the Amsterdam Cello Biennale * Piano Concerto (2019) Commissioned by Willoughby Symphony Orchestra for soloist Vivian Choi * Space Junk (2019) Commissioned by ASKO Schoenberg for the World Minimal Music Festival * Bosch Requiem: Lux Aeterna (2015–2018) Commissioned by November Music, Bach Festival Dordrecht, Temko * Cassini Suite (2015–2017) Commissioned and perform

Katia Beaugeais

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Katia Beaugeais is an Australian-French contemporary classical composer based in Sydney. Career After learning piano and saxophone from the ages six and twelve respectively, Katia Beaugeais completed a Bachelor of Music Education degree to become a classroom music teacher. She then completed a postgraduate saxophone degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and began to compose and perform her own work for the first time. She was awarded a Ph.D. in composition in 2021, and released Breath by Breath, her debut solo album performing her own saxophone compositions. She has collaborated with Australian composers Katy Abbott, Anne Boyd, Bruce Crossman, Rosalind Page, and William Barton. In 2010 she won the ISCM-IAMIC International Young Composer Award for her 2008 work Sound Box. References

Katy Abbott

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Katy Abbott (born 1971) is an Australian composer. Abbott writes music for orchestra, chamber ensemble and voice. Her work reflects her interests in contemporary Australian cultures and often explores notions of home, place, humour and connection. Biography Abbott’s compositions have been broadcast and performed in the UK, Europe, Asia and the US and featured in Australian and International music festivals including the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) conference in Beijing the International Rostrum of Composers in Wroclaw, Poland, and the Melbourne, Perth and Canberra International Festivals. Abbott studied with Stuart Greenbaum, Brenton Broadstock and Linda Kouvaras at University of Melbourne, where she completed her PhD in 2007. Several of Abbott’s compositions have appeared on the syllabus of Australian Music Examinations Board and ANZCA. Promethean Editions (NZ), the Australian Music Centre Abbott has released five solo albums; Sunburnt Aftertones: The Chamber Music of Katy Abbott (Move Records), The Domestic Sublime: The Vocal Music of Katy Abbott (ABC Classics), Famous (ABC Classics), Punch: The Brass Music of Katy Abbott (ABC Classics) and The Peasant Prince

Kevin Penkin

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Kevin Penkin (born 22 May 1992) is a British-born Australian composer, primarily for video games and anime. He is best known for composing the score of the anime Made in Abyss, which won Best Score at the 2nd Crunchyroll Anime Awards, and the score for the Tower of God anime adaptation, also won the same category at the fifth edition. Biography Penkin was born on 22 May 1992 in the United Kingdom, and grew up in Perth, Western Australia. Penkin’s interest in video game music started from when he first heard the “Phendrana Drifts” theme from Metroid Prime; In 2013, Penkin received a Bachelor of Music in Composition and Music Technology at Edith Cowan University’s Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. In 2015, Penkin graduated from the Royal College of Music with a Master of Composition degree in Composition for Screen. His studies were supported by a grant from the Tait Memorial Trust as the inaugural Tait Scholar at the Royal College of Music. In 2016, Penkin collaborated with Kinema Citrus on the Norn9 anime and the Under the Dog original video animation soundtracks. Penkin composed the music for Kinema Citrus’ anime adaptation of The Rising of the Shield Hero and NetEase

Keyna Wilkins

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Keyna Wilkins is an Australian/British composer-musician. Her compositions are published and distributed by Wiripang Music. Wilkins was a finalist in the Australian Music Centre and APRA AMCOS 2021 Art Music Awards in the category Award for Excellence in Experimental Music, for “recording and developing new projects in 2020”. She was also a finalist in the 2018 Art Music Awards, in the category Award for Excellence by an Individual, for her “activities in original art music throughout 2017 as a composer-musician including releasing three original albums”. Wilkins is passionate about supporting refugees being detained in Immigration Detention. In 2021 she collaborated with visual artist and poet Jalal Mahamede, who is currently being held in Brisbane’s immigration detention centre. They have released an album, featuring original music by Wilkins and poetry by Mahamede. Education Wilkins holds a Master of Music Composition from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Her thesis is titled Astronomical Phenomena in Music Composition and explores “the astronomical phenomena in music composition”. Prior to moving to Australia, Wilkins studied at Bristol University (UK) where is obtained a MA

Le Tuan Hung

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Lê Tuấn Hùng (born 1960 in Vietnam) is an Australian-Vietnamese composer, performer, and musicologist. He is a multi-instrumentalist with a strong background in Vietnamese traditional music and Western classical music. Known as a skilled performer of the đàn tranh, a Vietnamese zither, he plays traditional Vietnamese music as well as cross-cultural and experimental music. His compositions have been created for a wide range of instruments, ensembles and media. A number of his compositions combine Vietnamese instruments with Indonesian and European Renaissance and Medieval instruments. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. in Music from Monash University. He is married to Dang Kim Hien (Ðặng Kim Hiền). Bibliography * Le, Tuan Hung. “Mindfulness of hearing : hearing places from a non-western perspective” in Hearing Places : Sound, Place, Time and Culture. Edited by Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. * Le, Tuan Hung. Dan Tranh Music of Vietnam : Traditions and Innovations. Melbourne, Tokyo : Australia Asia Foundation, 1998. (hard back); (paperback) * Le, Tuan Hung. “Vietnamese Traditi

Leah Curtis

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Leah Curtis is a Los Angeles-based Australian musician and composer. She is best known for her work as composer and orchestrator for film, as well as in contemporary classical composition. Awards Curtis has been the recipient of a number of awards include the Queen Elizabeth II Trust, the Dame Joan Sutherland Award, the Reg Waite Award, Young Shakespearean Artist of the Year, two Hollywood Music in Media Awards with multiple nominations and a Fulbright. She is a recipient of Reel Change from New Music USA. APRA-AGSC Screen Music Awards These awards are presented annually since 2002 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC). - rowspan=“1” 2012 Animula Vagula from Exitus Roma Featuring Lisbeth Scott Best Original Song Composed for the Screen - Hollywood Music in Media Awards The Hollywood Music in Media Awards are presented annually. - rowspan=“1” 2014 No Ticket to Travel for Woodland Best Original Song/Score for a Commercial Advertisement - rowspan=“1” 2013 Moving Water from Empyrean Best Original Score (Indie / Short / Documentary) - rowspan=“1” 2012 Animula Vagula from Exitus Roma Featuring Lisbeth Scott Best World

Letty Katts

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Violet Katts (3 January 1919 – 19 September 2007 ), was an Australian songwriter who published under the name Letty Katts, often spelled Lettie. She is best known for her songs “A Town Like Alice” (1956) and “Never Never” (1945), frequently referred to as “Riding to the Never Never”. History Katts was born in 1919, the only daughter of Anton Katts (22 January 1888 – March 1952) and Lucretia Katts, née Pimblett, who married on 11 June 1921. (perhaps Ostrog, Šentjernej) and in 1912 left as a refugee for Australia, and founded a radiator repair and sheet metal fabrication shop “King & Katts” at 623 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, Queensland. Around 1925 they built a large house, “Roseneath”, in Enoggera where Letty grew up. Both parents were musicians: Anton played balalaika and mandolin; Lucretia was a pianist, and Katts had private piano tuition, initially with Constance Hartshorn, organist for the Enoggera Presbyterian church, then from around 1930 with John Ellis, who took out a newspaper advertisement when Kitts graduated ATCL and LTCL in 1939. Katts married John Stanton Davis Mellick (born 22 February 1920), on 8 December 1941. Katts worked as a music teacher while her husband

Lindsay Vickery

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Lindsay Vickery (born 1965) is an Australian composer and performer. Early life and education Lindsay Vickery was born in Perth. He studied composition with John Exton and Roger Smalley at the School of Music, University of Western Australia. He has written much ensemble and interactive electronic music, exploring readymades and collage (notably interrogating the work of Charlie Parker) as well as improvisation, nonlinear writing and computer-performer pieces. His chamber opera Rendez-vous: An Opera Noir is based on the Nouveau Roman DJINN: un trou rouge entre les pavés disjoints by French author Alain Robbe-Grillet. Career His interactive electronic music often employs experimental interfaces such as the Yamaha MIBURI and other self-devised alternative controllers. He has performed on reed instruments, electronics or as a conductor in the groups alea new music ensemble, Magnetic Pig, HEDKIKR, SQUINT, Candied Limbs and Decibel, and with artists such as Jon Rose (Music in the Age of Shopping, The People’s Music), Stelarc, Amy Knoles and Cat Hope. His works have been performed by groups such as The California Ear Unit, Topology, Clocked Out, Ensemble Scintilla Divina, the MATA Ensemb

Liza Lim

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Liza Lim (born 30 August 1966) is an Australian composer. Lim writes concert music (chamber and orchestral works) as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on installation and video projects. Her work reflects her interests in Chinese culture and the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice. Early life and education Liza Lim (林瑞玲) was born in Perth, Western Australia, to Chinese parents. They were doctors who during her early years spent time working and studying in Brunei, and she was sent to boarding school. At the age of 11, she was encouraged by her teachers at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Melbourne to turn from piano and violin to composition. Lim earned her PhD from the University of Queensland, her Master of Music from the University of Melbourne (1996), and her Bachelor of Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts (1986). She studied composition in Melbourne with Richard David Hames and Riccardo Formosa and in Amsterdam with Ton de Leeuw. Career Lim has been a guest lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer School, the University of California, San Diego, she is married to Daryl Buckley, its artistic director.

Louis Lavater

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Louis Isidore Lavater (2 March 1867 – 22 May 1953) was an Australian composer and author born in Victoria, of Swiss-Swedish extraction. Henry Lawson and Mary Gilmore. He was a leading proponent of the Australian bush ballad as a vehicle for music education. In 1938, Alfred Hill composed a musical setting of Lavater’s verse Mopoke. Lavater’s words were also set by Australian composers Doctor Ruby Davy and Fanny Turbayne. Early life Born in St Kilda, Melbourne, Lavater was the eldest child of Emily Challinor (née Swindells) and Swiss-born George Theodore Adams Lavater, a civil servant who had migrated to Victoria after the 1851 gold rush. He attended Grammar School in St Kilda and Wesley College. At the University of Melbourne from 1884 he began to study medicine. He later changed his enrolment to study music though did not finish the degree. While at the University Lavater joined the bohemian Buonarotti Club (1883–87), was active in its musical section and accompanied the artists on their painting camps. Much later he recalled lively experiences with the Club in a 1929 Argus interview. Notability Lavater was regarded as a gifted leader of music in rural Victoria. He was fondly known

Malcolm Williamson

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Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson (21 November 19312 March 2003) was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen’s Music from 1975 until his death. According to Grove Music Online, although Williamson’s earlier compositions aligned with Serialist techniques, “he later modified his approach to composition in the search of a more inclusive musical language that was fundamentally tonal and, above all, lyrical. In the 1960s, he was commonly referred to as the most often commissioned composer in Britain, and over his lifetime he produced more than 250 works in a wide variety of genres.” Life and career Williamson was born in Sydney in 1931; his father was an Anglican priest, Rev. George Williamson. He studied composition and horn at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His teachers included Eugene Goossens. In 1950 he moved to London where he worked as an organist, a proofreader, and a nightclub pianist. In 1952 he converted to Roman Catholicism. From 1953 he studied with Elisabeth Lutyens and Erwin Stein. His first major success was with his Piano Concerto No. 1, premiered by Clive Lythgoe at the 1958 Cheltenham Festival to a standing ovation. Williamson was a pr

Margaret Sutherland

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Margaret Ada Sutherland (20 November 189712 August 1984) was an Australian composer, among the best-known female musicians her country has produced. Career Margaret Sutherland’s father was George Sutherland, a journalist and writer and member of a prominent Scottish-Australian family. The painter Jane Sutherland was her aunt and the physicist and mathematician William Sutherland was her uncle. Her sister, Ruth Sutherland was a painter and writer. Her first piano teacher was another aunt, Julia Sutherland (1861-1930), a pupil of Louis Pabst, a German émigré then considered to be Melbourne’s leading piano teacher (himself a pupil of Anton Rubinstein, and Percy Grainger’s first teacher). The Four Temperaments (orchestrated by Robert W. Hughes in 1964), concertos for various instruments (including violin), a symphonic poem entitled Haunted Hills (1953), and the chamber opera The Young Kabbarli (1964; libretto by Maie Casey). A severe stroke in 1969 ended her composing career. Despite the emphasis on non-vocal works in her total output, one of Sutherland’s most recognised pieces is “In the Dim Counties” (1936) for voice and piano accompaniment from Five Songs. Sutherland sets her music

Mark Bradshaw (composer)

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Mark Bradshaw (born 1983) is an Australian composer known for his work in film and television, as well as his former relationship with Ben Whishaw. Early life Bradshaw was born in Sydney, where he studied experimental music at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) and later attended the University of Sydney. Career Bradshaw is best known for his work in several of Jane Campion’s movies and TV series, including Bright Star and Top of the Lake. Bradshaw has composed for a variety of ensembles including string quartet, orchestra, and a cappella chorus. In 2024 he and choreographer Fadi Giha were awarded a British Council Fellowship to compose and create a piece as artists in residence at Bundanon in Australia. Personal life As of a 2010 interview, Bradshaw was living in London. In August 2012, in Sydney, Bradshaw entered into a civil partnership with British actor Ben Whishaw. Whishaw and Bradshaw met around 2009 on the set of Bright Star where Whishaw played the role of English poet John Keats. The relationship remained private until being made public in 2013. They split in 2022. Work * The Water Diary (short film), 2006 * Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s’étei

Martin Armiger

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John Martin Armiger (10 June 1949 – 27 November 2019) was an Australian musician, record producer and composer. He was one of the singer-songwriters and guitarists with Melbourne-based rock band the Sports from August 1978 to late 1981, which had Top 30 hits on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart with, “Don’t Throw Stones” (1979), “Strangers on a Train” (1980) and “How Come” (1981); and Top 20 albums with Don’t Throw Stones (No. 9, 1979), Suddenly (No. 13, 1980) and Sondra (1981). Armiger was musical director for Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV 1984 series Sweet and Sour and was record producer on the related soundtrack album as well as performing and songwriting. In 1986 he produced and composed for another ABC TV soundtrack for the miniseries Dancing Daze. At the Australian Film Institute Awards of 1986 he shared an accolade for Best Original Music Score with William Motzing for their work on Young Einstein (publicly released 1988). Armiger notably co-produced “Dumb Things” for Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, with Kelly, on the Young Einstein soundtrack. It was later released as the fourth single from the band’s second album, Under the Sun on Mushroom Records impr

Martin Wesley-Smith

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Martin Wesley-Smith (10 June 1945 – 26 September 2019) was an Australian composer with an eclectic output ranging from children’s songs to environmental events. He worked in a range of musical styles, including choral music, operas, computer music, music theatre, chamber and orchestral music, and audiovisual pieces which bring words, music and images together. He often worked with his librettist brother, Peter Wesley-Smith. He was one of the pioneers of computer, or electronic, music. Two main themes dominated Wesley-Smith’s music: the life, work and ideas of Lewis Carroll, and the plight of the people of East Timor. Life Wesley-Smith was born, one of twin boys, in Adelaide. He had two other brothers. His parents were part of the Adelaide establishment. His father was the academic registrar of the University of Adelaide, and his mother was a teacher and a presenter of the ABC’s radio program Kindergarten of the Air. He studied composition at the University of Adelaide. From his student days, Wesley-Smith was a rebel, moonlighting on the banjo with a folkie band, the Wesley Three, when his teachers would have preferred he focus on his classical studies. His work is being jointly arc

Mary Finsterer

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Mary Finsterer (born 25 August 1962) is an Australian composer and academic. Life Finsterer was born in Canberra in 1962. She graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Melbourne. A recipient of the Royal Netherlands Government Award in 1993, she continued her studies in Amsterdam with Louis Andriessen, then returned to Australia and studied with Brenton Broadstock, completing a Master of Music degree in 1995 at the University of Melbourne. She completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2003. Since 2007 Finsterer has completed a body of work that includes In Praise of Darkness, a major orchestral work for the Dutch ensemble Asko/Schönberg in association with Tura Music, a violin duo for soloists Natsuko Yoshimoto and James Cuddeford, a string quartet for the Goldner String Quartet, a chamber work for the Sydney Soloists, and a number of works for her 2009 composer-in-residence position at the Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre. Her orchestral fanfare Afmaeli was the opening piece for the 70th birthday celebrations of composer Louis Andriessen at the Holland Festival in 2009. In the same year Finsterer was the winner of the Paul Lowin Orchestral Prize

Mary Mageau

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Mary Jane Mageau (4 September 1934 – 9 January 2020) was an American-born writer, harpsichordist and composer who had lived and worked in Australia graduating with a Master of Music degree. In 1974 she accepted an Australian guest lectureship and there married architect Kenneth White, becoming an Australian citizen and resident of Queensland. She was particularly prominent in lobbying for opportunities for women composers. Sitsky described her later works as more elegant and refined. Mageau died in Queensland at the age of 85. Honors and awards *Silver Medal, Louis Moreau Gottschalk International Composer’s Competition *Alienor Harpsichord Concerto Competition for Composers, 1994 *ASCAP Standard Award, granted annually since 1981 *Commendation, Vienna Modern Masters First Recording Awards, 1990 Works Selected works include: *Triple Concerto for piano trio and orchestra *Better Way for treble choir with piano *Ragtime Remembered for quintet (2001) *She Is a Cat for soprano and piano (2000) *Ragtime Remembered for solo piano (2000) *Contrasts in Continuum for unaccompanied viola (1968) *Statement and Variations for viola solo (1979) *Calls from the Heartland for violin with piano (19

Matthew Dewey

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Matthew Ingvald Dewey (born 1984) is an Australian classical music composer, singer, and music producer. Biography Matthew Dewey is an Australian composer and music producer who studied composition with Professor Douglas Knehans at the University of Tasmania and composition/theatrical design/singing with Greek-Australian composer/designer Constantine Koukias. His very early years were spent training with the IHOS Music Theatre Laboratory in the creation of new musical-theatrical works, and this early exposure led to a career that flourished at a young age. In 2003 he sang the bass role in the Australasian premiere of Hydrogen Jukebox by Philip Glass. He works mostly in concert music and opera/music-theatre and has been involved in the premieres of more than 20 new works as a principal performer and singer, and numerous other productions variously as composer, orchestrator, conductor and compositional assistant. He currently works as the music director for ABC Classic FM in Sydney. Major works Orchestral * Symphony No. 1 (Port Arthur, 1996), for string orchestra. Commissioned by Damien Holloway. Premiered at the Hobart Town Hall, by the Hobart Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Edwin P

Matthew Hindson

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Matthew John Hindson AM (born 12 September 1968) is an Australian composer. Biography Matthew Hindson was born in Wollongong, New South Wales, in 1968. He studied composition at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne with composers including Peter Sculthorpe, Eric Gross, Brenton Broadstock and Ross Edwards. Hindson’s works have been performed by ensembles and orchestras throughout his native Australia, including most of its professional symphony orchestras and chamber groups. Overseas, his compositions have been presented in New Zealand, Germany, France, Austria, the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States, Japan, Malaysia, Canada and Thailand, and have been featured at such key events as the 1994 and 2000 Gaudeamus Music Weeks in Amsterdam, the 1997 ISCM Festival in Copenhagen and the 1998 Paris Composers Rostrum. His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, musical elements such as driving repeated rhythms and high dynamic levels are typically found in his works. Indeed, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music. One of his most notable works, Speed (1996), was thought by some to

Matthew Shlomowitz

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Matthew Shlomowitz (born 7 February 1975) is a composer of contemporary classical music and Associate Professor in Composition at the University of Southampton. Biography He was raised in Adelaide, Australia, and studied with at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and with Brian Ferneyhough at Stanford University. He also studied privately with Michael Finnissy in the United Kingdom. Since 2002 he has lived in London where he lectured at the Royal College of Music and for the Syracuse University London Program. He taught composition at Durham University during the 2008/09 academic year and was a Programme Collaborator for the Borealis Festival in Norway. Music He is co-director of Plus minus ensemble and the performance series Rational Rec and is a member of InterInterInter, a group that creates events mixing performance and audience activity. He was also a co-founder of Ensemble Offspring. He has been represented by the New Voices scheme at the British Music Information Centre and by the Australian Music Centre. The bulk of his compositions are for chamber ensembles and often involve unusual instrumental combinations. Free Square Jazz, for instance, is for recorder, electric guitar

May Brahe

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Mary Hannah (May) Brahe (née Dickson) (6 November 188414 August 1956) was an Australian composer, best known for her songs and ballads. Her most famous song by far is “Bless This House”, recorded by John McCormack, Beniamino Gigli, Lesley Garrett and Bryn Terfel. According to Move.com.au: “She was the only Australian woman composer to win local an international recognition before World War II,” having “290 of her 500 songs published. Of these, 248 were written under her own name, the remainder under aliases. Biography Mary Hannah Dickson was born in East Melbourne in 1884. She was known as May from an early age. Her father was native born and her mother Scottish. She studied piano with her mother, then at Stratherne Girls’ School, Hawthorn, and later with Mona McBurney and the singer Alice Rebotarro. In 1903 she married Frederick Brahe, the couple had two sons and a daughter. By 1910 she was playing in a trio with George W. L. Marshall-Hall, and accompanying singers. In 1912 she left for London to establish herself as a composer, leaving her children behind in the care of family. Her first success was the 1915 song “Down Here,” beginning “It’s Quiet Down Here” with lyrics by P.J. O

Melissa Dunphy

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Melissa Dunphy (born 1980) is an Australian-American composer best known for her vocal, political, and theatrical music. Born in Australia and raised in an immigrant family, Dunphy herself immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an award‐winning and acclaimed composer. She first came to national attention when her large‐scale work the Gonzales Cantata, a 40-minute choral piece in Baroque style that sets the text of the parts of the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy hearings in which former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified. It was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, National Review, Fox News, and on the Rachel Maddow Show in 2009; Maddow described it as “probably the coolest thing you’ve ever seen on this show.” Dunphy completed her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and is currently on the composition faculty at Rutgers University. Early life Born in Brisbane, Australia, Dunphy was raised in an immigrant household. Dunphy’s father was a Greek immigrant, and her mother was a refugee who fled from China to evade the Cultural Revolution. Dunphy first began piano lessons at age 3. Her mother introduced her to m

Michael Hannan (composer)

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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

Miriam Hyde

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Miriam Beatrice Hyde (15 January 191311 January 2005) was an Australian composer, classical pianist, music educator, and poet. She composed over 150 works for piano, 50 songs, other instrumental and orchestral works and performed as a concert pianist with eminent conductors including Sir Malcolm Sargent, Constant Lambert, Georg Schnéevoigt, Sir Bernard Heinze and Geoffrey Simon. She also had books of poetry published, and wrote an autobiography. Life Hyde was born in Adelaide, a daughter of Clarence and Muriel Hyde (née Gmeiner) of Torrens Park. Music was an important part of her family life: her mother played and taught piano; her aunt, Clarice Gmeiner, played violin, viola and harp with the South Australian Symphony Orchestra; and her younger sister, Pauline, played violin and sang. Her early music lessons were provided by her mother, but in 1925 she won a scholarship to attend the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. After graduating with her Bachelor of Music degree in 1931, she won an Elder Overseas Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, which she attended from 1932 to 1935. In 1935, she performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 under Malcolm Sargent, and

Mirrie Hill

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Mirrie Irma Hill (née Solomon) (1 December 18891 May 1986) was an Australian composer. Early life Mirrie Irma Jaffa Hill was born on 1 December 1889 in the Sydney suburb of Randwick. She was the youngest of three, born to Levien Jaffa Solomon and Kate Caroline. She had a good ear early on, detecting dissonance and running out of the room whenever her aunt would play Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. She studied composition with Alfred Hill, who would later become her husband, at Shirley School, Edgecliff. With Alfred Hill as conductor, Godfrey Smith and the Sydney Amateur Orchestral Society performed Mirrie Hill’s first orchestral work, Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, in 1914 at the Sydney Town Hall. She was unable to study in Germany because of World War I, so she instead went to the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, where she was awarded a scholarship by the director, Henri Verbrugghen. Mirrie Hill described her own music as “not in the very modern idiom but entirely individual as to style and content.” Although she did create many longer pieces of music for orchestra and ensembles, Hill became known as a miniaturist because a great deal of her published works wer

Mona McBurney

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Mona Margaret McBurney (29 July 18624 December 1932) was a British pianist, teacher and composer who lived and worked in Australia. Life Mona McBurney was born in Douglas, Isle of Man, the youngest of six children of teacher and scholar Isaiah McBurney and art and music teacher Margaret McBurney. Mona studied music in Edinburgh with Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who was later a principal of the Royal Academy of Music. The family emigrated to Victoria, Australia, in 1881, and settled in Geelong. McBurney attended the Ladies’ College where her brother Samuel was principal and the University of Melbourne in 1881. In 1892 she continued her studies at the University of Melbourne as a music student with G.W.L. Marshall-Hall, graduating in 1896. After ending her studies, McBurney worked as a composer and educator. In 1907 she conducted a women’s orchestra in her Northern Ballad which was a commission for the Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work Works McBurney composed an opera, a concerto for piano and orchestra, a string quartet, two choral odes, a number of piano works and about thirty songs. Selected works include: * “Ode to Dante”, 1902 * The Dalmatian, opera, libretto adapted from a popu

Monique diMattina

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Monique diMattina is an Australian jazz pianist, singer and composer. diMattina composes and performs in a range of genres encompassing jazz roots, country, blues, classical and other contemporary styles. Personal life and education diMattina grew up in Melbourne, Australia, from Italian and English convict heritage. She studied law at the University of Melbourne before taking up jazz piano and composition at Victorian College of the Arts, focussing her masters thesis on pianist Wynton Kelly. diMattina lives in Melbourne with her two daughters. She teaches at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and Monash University. Career In 2000, following Queens Trust and Fulbright postgraduate awards, In 2000, diMattina orchestrated Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark starring Björk. In 2009 diMattina released her first solo piano album, Senses, followed by Welcome Stranger, in which she sings and plays piano. The album mostly contains original songs, with a cover of Paul Kelly’s “Dumb Things” in a New Orleans style. In 2011 diMattina released her second solo piano album Sun signs, designed around the twelve signs of the zodiac. During this period she performed a regular segment called “Shak

Moritz Heuzenroeder

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Moritz Heuzenroeder (15 July 1849 – 10 November 1897) was a pianist, composer and teacher of music born in Germany who had a substantial career in South Australia. History Moritz Heuzenroeder was born in Ottersberg the youngest son of Dr. Ferdinand Anton Joseph Leopold (known as Joseph Leopold) Heuzenroeder, a prominent Sanitätsrat (medical practitioner) originally from Duderstadt, and from early childhood was preoccupied with performing music. He left Germany for South Australia some time before 1871 and settled in Gawler, where for a year or two he conducted a jeweller’s shop, but he had a greater love for music, and returned to Germany for three or four years to further study piano under Dr. Sebert, gaining Royal Academy of Stuttgart qualifications, and studying voice production. On his return he settled in Adelaide and advertised himself as a teacher of singing; the baritone Richard Nitschke and singing teacher Minna Fischer were two of his pupils. He was a friend of Hermann Schrader, who considered him a musical genius. He founded an orchestra at Tanunda, and a choral society at Angaston. He moved from Adelaide to Tanunda early in 1897; he died unexpectedly the same year. He n

Moya Henderson

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Moya Patricia Henderson (born 2 August 1941 in Quirindi, New South Wales) is an Australian composer. A graduate of the University of Queensland, Henderson was Resident Composer at Opera Australia during their first season at the Sydney Opera House in 1973. In the mid-1970s, Henderson studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and music-theatre with Mauricio Kagel at the Cologne Musikhochschule. Henderson’s compositions include such pieces as the work for organ and pre-recorded tape, Sacred Site (1983), The Dreaming written for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, “Six Urban Songs: The Patrick White Song Cycle” for soprano and orchestra (1983), and an opera, Lindy (1997), There, she continued her musical education in Germany then returned to Australia towards the end of 1976 to teach composition as a part-time lecturer at the University of Sydney. In 1978, she became resident composer in the Department of Music, and in a three-year span, she worked to stimulate the interest of students in music-theatre by encouraging them to create their own music-theatre compositions. Works Henderson did not focus on one style of composition. Her works ranged from chamber music, instrumental music

Nicholas McRoberts

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Nicholas Owen McRoberts (born 16 January 1977) is an Australian composer and conductor of classical music. Career He studied music in Australia, before moving to Paris, France where he lives today. In 2023 he founded Opéra Biarritz with the support of the city and acts as their artistic and musical director. Their original adaptation of La traviata received widespread praise. With Opéra Biarritz he has since conducted its New Year’s concert and, in April 2026, a charity concert with the Basque choirs Oldarra and Itsasoa in aid of the restoration of Biarritz’s Sainte-Eugénie church. In 2023 he conducted the Orchestre Demos Orchestre de Paris at the Philharmonie in Paris and was subsequently named as conductor for the 2024/2025 season. His Symphony No. 1 “From the Old World” was premiered by the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra on 27 August 2022 with the composer conducting. His Adagio for Strings was commissioned for the Nürtinger Chamber Orchestra and first performed on 14 November 2021, conducted by Friederike Kienle. It was written during the Covid lockdowns and recorded with the Janáček Philharmonic in March 2021. The French première was given by the Ensemble Orchestral de Biarritz,

Nicholas Vines

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Nicholas Vines (born Sydney, 1976) is an Australian composer currently based in Sydney. He is particularly active at home and in the United States. Interpreters of Vines’ work range from specialist new music ensembles to high school students. He has received prizes from the US, UK and Poland, as well as Australian honours such as APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards. His compositions are published by Faber Music, Wirripang and the Australian Music Centre. Three albums of his music are available commercially: Torrid Nature Scenes (Stephen Drury & the Callithumpian Consort), Loose, Wet, Perforated (Guerilla Opera) and Hipster Zombies From Mars (Ryan MacEvoy McCullough). While at the University of Sydney, Vines’s main teachers were Anne Boyd, Peter Sculthorpe and Ross Edwards. He later completed a PhD at Harvard University, studying with Harrison Birtwistle, Bernard Rands, Magnus Lindberg, Julian Anderson, Lee Hyla, Mario Davidovsky, Judith Weir and Michael Finnissy. Vines actively identifies with transmodernism. His compositional approach is rooted in the technical resources of the Western classical canon, while embracing sounds and ideas from an array of popular, experimental, Australian and

Nigel Butterley

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Nigel Henry Cockburn Butterley (13 May 1935 – 19 February 2022) was an Australian composer and pianist. Life and career Butterley was born in Sydney and learned to play the piano at the age of five. He attended Sydney Grammar School, but music was not taught at the school at that time, so he sought training from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He then travelled abroad and spent a year in Europe, where he studied with Priaulx Rainier in London. After returning to Australia, Butterley composed his work Laudes in 1963. He won the Prix Italia award for his work In the Head the Fire in 1966. In 1967 he was the inaugural winner of the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. He continued to compose throughout the following decades, composing works for the Sydney Proms concerts such as Interaction for Artist and Orchestra, music performed while artist John Peart painted and First Day Covers, a collaboration with Barry Humphries’ character Dame Edna Everage. Butterley went on to win the Paul Lowin Orchestral Prize in 2001. Butterley lectured at the Newcastle Conservatorium from 1973 to 1991, and later at the Sydney Conservatorium. He also broadcast programs on ABC Classic FM. On 10 June 1991

Nigel Westlake

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Nigel Westlake (born 6 September 1958) is an Australian composer, musician and conductor. As a composer for the screen, his film credits include the feature films Ali’s Wedding, Paper Planes, Miss Potter, Babe and its sequel Babe: Pig in the City, Children of the Revolution, Blueback and The Nugget. He also composed the theme for SBS World News. Biography Westlake was born in Sydney, the son of Sydney Symphony Orchestra principal clarinettist Donald Westlake. In 1983, Westlake studied bass clarinet and composition in the Netherlands Personal life Westlake is married to Jan Loquet Westlake, and together, they had two sons. Their son Eli was killed in a road rage incident on 7 June 2008, at age 21. Westlake composed Missa Solis - Requiem for Eli and dedicated it to Eli. It was premiered by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Myer Music Bowl in February 2011. Filmography * Candy Regentag (1989) * Act of Necessity (1991) * Antarctica (1991) * Backsliding (1991) * Babe (1995) * Children of the Revolution (1996) * Wild Australia: The Edge (1996) * Babe: Pig in the City (1998) * A Little Bit of Soul (1998) * Solarmax (2000) * The Nugget (2002) * Horseplay (2003) * Hell Has Harbour Vie

Nora Baldenweg

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Nora Baldenweg (born 22 July 1981) is a Swiss Australian musician, vocalist, composer, producer and creative director in fashion. She was the first Swiss female composer to be nominated for the World Soundtrack Awards (Public Choice). She is a member of the World Soundtrack Academy and the European Film Academy. Career Baldenweg has been working as a composer, producer and co-founded the music production company GREAT GARBO in 2004. She has composed music for over 300 advertising commercials for brands like Sony, Mastercard, Dove (one of the most viewed online ads of all time) and 20 fictional films and TV series. Many of her most famous works were produced in the context of the trio Diego Baldenweg with Nora Baldenweg and Lionel Baldenweg, comprising herself and her two brothers Diego Baldenweg and Lionel Baldenweg. Besides her career in music, Baldenweg simultaneously held positions in fashion publishing as editor-at-large/Paris director (Russh), editor-at-large/Paris director/senior editor (Indie), In May 2014 she relaunched the Paris-based magazine Modzik as editor-in-chief. In May 2017 she became editor-in-chief of UK-based magazine Lula. Since 2017 she works as a creative dir

Paul Doornbusch

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Paul Doornbusch (born 1959, Melbourne) is an Australian composer and musician. He is the author of a book documenting the first computer music, made with the CSIRAC. Doornbusch spent several years at RMIT University in Melbourne, and later taught at the New Zealand School of Music. He now lives in the Melbourne area. The biography accompanying his Corrosion CD states that “his compositional concerns involve new forms for music appropriate for contemporary culture…. He works mostly as an algorithmic composer, but occasionally in recent years he has engaged in peripheral areas such as the Place-Hampi project with Jeffrey Shaw. As an algorithmic composer, Doornbusch has identified and examined in detail the mapping stage of the process where structural data becomes musical parameters.” Recordings * Corrosion CD of the works of Paul Doornbusch, 2002 (EMF 043) * The Frog Peak Collaboration Project 1998 (USA) List of works * Continuity 1W (2007), electronics. * Lorenz (2005), piano. * Continuity3 (2000), percussion and electronics. * Continuity 2 (1999), bass recorder quartet and electronics. * Dialogus (2000), electronics. * ACT 5 (1998), for amplified bassoon and hanging percussion.

Paul Jarman

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Paul Jarman is an Australian multi-instrumentalist, composer and choirmaster. He is known for his work with school children, assisting them to develop their compositions. Jarman works with other composers and choir leaders. and promotes the inclusion of traditional music forms in compositions. His compositions for choir and orchestra have been performed around the world in venues such as the White House and at the opening of the World Rugby and at the London Olympics. From 1996 Paul Jarman has been part of the Australian world music group, Sirocco. He produced their album ‘Falling Leaf’ as well as playing on all the tracks. He has performed for audiences in over 35 countries. His instruments include the piano, saxophone, clarinet, synthesizer, taragoto, and bagpipe. He lives in northern New South Wales. Albums * Birralee Blokes – Towards Infinity (ABC Classics) * Gondwana Voices – New Light New Hope (ABC Classics) * Sing NSW/Sirocco – Young Australian’s Voices of Achievement (ABC Classics) * Sirocco – Falling Leaf (ABC Classics – nominated for Aria award 1999) * Sirocco – Under the Southern Sky and Essential Elements * The Voices of Vinegar Hill – (NSW ministries for the Arts) * AB

Peggy Glanville-Hicks

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Peggy Winsome Glanville-Hicks (29 December 191225 June 1990) was an Australian composer and music critic. Biography Early life and education Peggy Glanville-Hicks, born in Melbourne in her family’s home, was first educated at Milverton, a girls’ grammar school for “ladies” which taught subjects such as music, elocution, grammar, arithmetic, scripture, and physical exercise. She transferred to the larger and more prestigious Methodist Ladies’ College when she was nine years old. She received instruction in piano and displayed an early aptitude for the instrument, prompting her parents to acquire a grand piano for their home. She was granted U.S. citizenship in 1949. After leaving America, she lived in Greece from 1957 to 1975. In the United States she asked George Antheil to revise his Ballet Mécanique for a modern percussion ensemble for a concert she helped to organize. In 1966, after years of failing eyesight, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which was surgically removed, and she regained her sight. However, a result of this operation was her loss of a sense of smell. She died in Sydney in 1990. She had returned to Australia at the encouragement of James Murdoch and others.

Penelope Thwaites

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Penelope Mary Thwaites is a concert pianist and composer, recording artist and editor. Born in the United Kingdom of Australian parents, she is a citizen of both countries. Thwaites is best-known for her interpretations of the music of Australian composers, particularly Percy Grainger. Biography She grew up in Melbourne, Australia, attending Tintern Grammar and taking a degree in Music from Melbourne University (B.Mus Hons, 1966), where she won the Ormond Exhibition and was placed first in her final year. Following a period of working internationally as musical director and composer of music for the theatre, she continued orchestration studies in London with William L Reed and piano studies with the Swiss pianist Albert Ferber. Her debut at London’s Wigmore Hall in 1974 was followed by concerts and broadcasts in the UK and tours worldwide, both as solo recitalist and concerto soloist. In 1993, she appeared in the Australia Day Gala at the Royal Opera House in the presence of the Prince of Wales. Thwaites has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, BBC Concert Orchestra and leading orchestras in Australia, Europe and America. Repertoire a

Percy Code

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Edward Percival “Percy” Code (3 July 1888 – 16 October 1953) His father, Edward Thomas Code, was a trumpeter who led his own ensemble, Code’s Melbourne Brass Band. Percy learnt to play cornet and violin from his father, and played in his band. Aged 22 in 1910, he won the solo championship at the Royal South Street Competition in Ballarat. This saw him invited to England to play principal cornet with the Besses o’ th’ Barn Band, where he played professionally for the next few years. After returning to Australia, he conducted community bands in cities such as Ballarat. He married Elsie Maude Miller in 1915, but the couple never had children, and lived apart for many years. In 1921 Code moved to the United States, where he performed as a trumpeter with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Alfred Hertz. In San Francisco he also worked as a film composer and theatre pit musician. He returned to Australia in 1924, working as a radio music presenter, in addition to continuing to conduct and write music. From 1929 he worked as a conductor with the ABC until retiring in 1951. Percy Code died in Melbourne in 1953. Legacy Code’s compositions are not well known outside t

Percy Grainger

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Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who moved to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. Although much of his work was experimental and unusual, the piece with which he is most generally associated is his piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”. Grainger left Australia at the age of 13 to attend the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Between 1901 and 1914 he was based in London, where he established himself first as a society pianist and later as a concert performer, composer, and collector of original folk melodies. As his reputation grew he met many of the significant figures in European music, forming important friendships with Frederick Delius and Edvard Grieg. He became a champion of Nordic music and culture, his enthusiasm for which he often expressed in private letters, sometimes in crudely racist or antisemitic terms. In 1914 Grainger moved to the United States, where he live

Peter Andry

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Peter Edward Andry, (10 March 1927 – 7 December 2010) was a classical record producer and an influential executive in the recording industry, active from the 1950s to the 1990s. Born in Hamburg, Andry spent his formative years in Melbourne, Australia, where he became a professional flautist, with ambitions to be a conductor. After moving to England, where he studied with William Lloyd Webber and Sir Adrian Boult, he played the flute in the orchestra of a ballet company, with occasional chances to conduct. In 1953 he switched career, joining the Decca Record Company as a producer. Less than three years later he moved to Decca’s rival, His Master’s Voice, part of EMI, where he rose to become head of the group’s classical operations. After retiring from EMI in 1988, Andry headed a new classical label Warner Classics, before retiring finally from the recording industry in 1996. Life and career Early years Andry was born in Hamburg, the younger of two brothers. His mother was a professional opera singer, his father a lawyer. When Andry was eight the family moved to Australia, where he studied piano, composition and flute at the University of Melbourne. As a young and inexperienced super

Peter Best (composer)

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Peter Best is an Australian composer who has created or contributed to many film scores. His career started in 1967. In 1969, the founders of Producers Authors Composers and Talent (now PACT Centre for Emerging Artists) attended a Sydney University Architecture Revue, with sets by Geoffrey Atherden and Grahame Bond, and invited Bond, Atherden, Peter Weir, and Best a chance to do a show at the National Art School. Sir Robert Helpmann saw the show and took it to the Adelaide Festival, and soon afterwards Weir and Bond were commissioned to write a Christmas special TV show for ABC Television, called Man on a Green Bike. He has worked on such films as The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (1974), End Play (1976), The Picture Show Man (1977), We of the Never Never (1982), Goodbye Paradise (1983), Bliss (1985), Crocodile Dundee (1986), Crocodile Dundee II (1988), Muriel’s Wedding (1994), Doing Time for Patsy Cline (1997) and My Mother Frank (2000). Many of his scores have been released on compact disc (CD), including Crocodile Dundee on Varèse Sarabande, and We of the Never Never on 1M1 Records. He was also responsible for the theme music for several TV co

Peter Sculthorpe

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Peter Joshua Sculthorpe FAHA (29 April 1929 – 8 August 2014) was a distinguished Australian composer and music educator. Much of his music resulted from an interest in the music of countries neighbouring Australia, as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of Aboriginal Australian music with that of the heritage of the West. He was known primarily for his orchestral and chamber music, such as Kakadu (1988) and Earth Cry (1986), which evoke the sounds and feeling of the Australian bushland and outback. He also wrote 18 string quartets, using unusual timbral effects, works for piano, and two operas. He stated that he wanted his music to make people feel better and happier for having listened to it. He typically avoided the dense, atonal techniques of many of his contemporary composers. His work was often characterised by its distinctive use of percussion. As one of the compositional pioneers of a distinctively Australian sound, Sculthorpe and his music have been likened to the role played by Aaron Copland in America’s musical coming of age. Early life Sculthorpe was born and raised in Launceston, Tasmania. His mother, Edna, was passionate about English literature and was

Peter Tahourdin

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Peter Richard Tahourdin (27 August 192828 July 2009) was an English-born Australian composer. His compositions range from orchestral (5 symphonies) and chamber music to choral and educational music, as well as music for the opera and ballet. Without being his principal contribution, he was one of the pioneers in the field of electronic music. Early life and career Peter Tahourdin was born in Bramdean, Hampshire in 1928. He was the second child, and only son, of Major Victor Tahourdin and Veronica Price. Tahourdin went to Wellington College, and then in 1949 began his music studies at Trinity College of Music in London with Richard Arnell. He was appointed visiting composer to the University of Adelaide, on the recommendation of the chief conductor of the then South Australian Symphony Orchestra, Henry Krips, who had conducted his 2nd Sinfonietta. Peter Tahourdin died on 28 July 2009, aged 80. He was survived by both wives, two daughters and two grandchildren. Musical style and interests Tahourdin had wide musical interests including “chamber music, the orchestra, Indian music and music theatre”, and five symphonies (1960, 1969, 1979, 1987, 1994), His Elegy for string orchestra and

Philip Bračanin

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Philip Bračanin (born 26 May 1942) is an Australian composer and musicologist. Life Bračanin was born in Kalgoorlie, the son of Croatian immigrants. His early musical studies were with Miss Olive Ruane, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1962 with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and music. Professor Bracanin served on the boards of the Australian Music Centre, Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra and 4MBS Classic Radio. Bračanin initially began composing music in the 1970s for the purposes of creating music that would more effectively teach his students salient aspects of twentieth century compositional techniques. He eventually became interested in creating more serious compositions for their own sake, with his 1977 Trombone Concerto being now regarded as his first mature work. He has since produced a considerable body of music, including symphonic works, choral works, chamber music, and pieces for solo piano. Many works by Bračanin are published by the Australian Music Centre. He has occasionally been musically inspired by the Dalmatian Croatian musical heritage of his forebears. In 1995 his Guitar Concerto won the APRA Awar

Phillip Houghton

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Phillip Houghton (26 April 1954 – 30 September 2017) was an Australian classical guitarist and composer. Born in Melbourne, he began studying music at the age of 20 at Melba Conservatorium of Music. After a year, he then began studying privately with well-known classical pianist and guitarist Sebastian Jorgenson at the Montsalvat Artists Colony in Eltham, Victoria. Although Houghton had little compositional training, his music has achieved critical acclaim. In particular, his piece Stélé was recorded by John Williams in his 1998 album The Guitarist. Karin Schaupp made the first complete recording. Houghton composed music for film and Television, including the motion picture “The Custodian” (John Dingwall) and the animation series Plasmo (Tony Lawrence). He wrote a large number of unpublished sketches for electronic media and produced a record of his own experimental improvisations on electric guitar and piano frame, distributed privately. Houghton lived for many years in Sydney, teaching from his home in Petersham and then Summer Hill. He was highly regarded as a teacher, with a profound understanding of guitar technique and musical interpretation. He died, unexpectedly, within mon

Phyllis Zimmerman

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Phyllis E. Zimmerman (1934–2012) was an American composer, choral conductor, and music educator. Biography Zimmerman was born in Pennsylvania and graduated from Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania in 1956. She studied vocal performance at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota with conductor Paul J. Christiansen, graduating in 1959. Zimmerman taught music and directed choirs at Churchill Area High School in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania before becoming the choral director at Santa Barbara (California) High School, where she taught from 1969 to 1995. Her choirs toured Europe several times and performed in Romania by invitation of the U.S. State Department. During the late 1970s, Zimmerman was involved with the International League of Women Composers, which was absorbed into the International Alliance for Women in Music in 1995. Following her retirement in 1995, Zimmerman founded the Canticle A Cappella Choir, a community choir that recorded several CDs and performed on National Public Radio and NBC-TV. Concordia College honored her as a Distinguished Alumna in 2006. * “An Easter Carol” * “Fog” (words by Carl Sandburg, music by Phyllis Zimmerman) * “Four Settings of Poems by Sara T

Raffaello Squarise

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Raffaello Squarise (13 November 1856—15 April 1945), also known as Raphael Squarise, was an Italian violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer, who settled in Adelaide, South Australia, and Dunedin, New Zealand. He was a pioneer in the establishment of classical music in New Zealand. Biography Early years in Italy Raffaello Squarise was born in Vicenza, then part of the Austrian Empire, where his father, Antonio Squarise, worked as a sculptor. He attended the Istituto Musicale, Turin, for six years, studying violin under Francesco Bianchi and Pietro Bertuzzi, and composition under Carlo Pedrotti. Around this time he played in the orchestra of the Teatro Regio. Squarise graduated in 1875, completing a miniature Symphony in C Minor for his final examination. On returning to Vicenza he completed further study under Francesco Canneti. He afterwards served as military bandmaster at Contarina and municipal bandmaster at Arzignano. Australian years Squarise left Italy for Australia in 1882, arriving in Melbourne in August that year. He spent much of the next year as a violinist in the touring opera orchestras of the Williamson, Garner and Musgrove Company, and the Cagli and Paoli Opera C

Raimund Pechotsch

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Raimund Leo Pechotsch (23 July 1864 – 20 January 1941) was a composer of romantic and incidental musical theatre pieces. He was a Roman Catholic who also conducted liturgical music. Life Pechotsch was born in Vienna, his father Adalbert Pechotsch being a composer of some note. The band had been contracted to perform at the Melbourne Exhibition of 1881. He remained in Australia, but moved to Sydney. He was in Brisbane then left for New Zealand 1889. Pechotsch was musical director for Australian stage producer Oscar Asche. Raimund also worked for music publisher Palings and taught violin and piano in Sydney for many years. Pechotsch wrote incidental music for Walter Howard’s 1910 play The Prince and the Beggar Maid which was very successful in London and Australia. He also wrote music (orchestrated for ensemble of twenty) to accompany “Pete” a Lewis Parker stage adaptation of Hall Caine’s novel The Manxman. Later in life he remarried Alice McCarthy, the daughter of fellow Australian composer Dr William Charles MacCarthy. Works * The cycling schottische * A lost love with words by Frederick Augustus Packer * Emu waltz (1896) * For thee : song with violin obligato with words by Ernest

Raymond Hanson (composer)

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Raymond (Charles) Hanson AM (23 November 19136 December 1976) was an Australian composer and lecturer in composition at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music now known as the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. A highly regarded teacher and mentor to many prominent Australian musicians, Early years Hanson was born in the Sydney suburb of Burwood on 23 November 1913, the youngest of five children to Australian-born railroad engineer William Hanson, and his English-born wife Lilian, née Bennett. The marriage broke up when Hanson was quite young. Hanson was sickly as a child, suffering from bronchial complaints and a recurring ear infection that left him almost deaf in his left ear. He began experimenting in musical composition from the age of eight, inspired by his older sister’s piano practice. Hanson’s mother brought him up as a Baptist, and though he later left the faith he retained a lifelong interest in spirituality. Hanson attended Burwood Public and Fort Street High Schools, but left before completing his third year. He continued however to pursue piano lessons, aided by teacher Anne Spillane who kindly provided him with free lessons as his family was too poor to pay for them. He

Ric Formosa

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Riccardo Formosa (born 1 September 1954) is an Italian-born Australian musician and composer. He was the lead guitarist of the pop band Little River Band from 1975 to 1976 and recorded their first two albums, Little River Band and After Hours. Early life Formosa was born in Rome, Italy, but grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He migrated to Australia in 1974 and worked as a music arranger and studio musician. For the latter, he wrote the song “Bourbon Street” and co-wrote “Another Runaway” with fellow member Beeb Birtles. References Further reading *Barkl, Michael. 2010. Vertigo: Riccardo Formosa’s Composition Technique. Saarbrücken. * Barkl, Michael. 1997. Riccardo Formosa. The Oxford Companion to Australian Music (ed. Warren Bebbington). Melbourne: OUP. External links *

Richard Meale

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Richard Graham Meale, AM MBE FAHA (24 August 193223 November 2009) was a highly regarded Australian composer of instrumental works and operas, and an influential music educator. Life and works Sydney 1932–1970 Meale was born in Sydney in 1932. At the time the Meale family lived in Marrickville, an inner suburb of Sydney. Meale’s father Oliver was an engineer, and his mother Lilla Adeline was the daughter of Benjamin Richards, a former mayor of Marrickville. His elder brother, Colin Meale, was a high school principal. Meale was a prodigious teenager who left school because he hated exams. Burston had him at 14 reading Gertrude Stein and the whole of Marcel Proust. He was also borrowing modern scores from the collection of the City of Sydney Library. He studied clarinet, harp, music history and theory, but as a composer he was entirely self-taught. Meale’s reputation as a pianist grew exponentially with each premiere of new works by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and other post-war European giants, especially the music of Olivier Messiaen. “To hear Meale play Messiaen is like hearing a sermon by John the Baptist,” Melbourne critic Kenneth Hince wrote. Meale left the Conservator

Richard Mills (composer)

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Richard John Mills (born 14 November 1949) is an Australian conductor and composer. He was the artistic director of Victorian Opera from 2013 to 2023, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera Batavia (2001). Career Mills was born and grew up in Toowoomba, Queensland, and went to Nudgee College in Brisbane. He studied in London with Edmund Rubbra at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and worked as a percussionist in England and for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Mills started conducting and composing in the 1980s. On 5 June 2013, he withdrew from the Opera Australia Ring cycle. Works Works for the stage * Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1987), ballet * Earth Poem / Sky Poem (1993), a music theatre work for Aboriginal dancers and musicians, orchestra and electronic sounds * Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996), opera in two acts, libretto by Peter Goldsworthy after the play by Ray Lawler * Batavia (2001), opera in three acts, libretto by Peter Goldsworthy * The Love of

Robert Dalley-Scarlett

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Dr. Robert Dalley-Scarlett (16 April 1887 – 31 July 1959) was an Australian organist, choirmaster, composer and musicologist. History Dalley-Scarlett was born Robert Scarlett in Darlinghurst, New South Wales, a son of Robert Campbell Scarlett and his wife Emily Florence Scarlett, née Hancock. The name “Dalley” was added in tribute to his godfather, William Bede Dalley and hyphenated later. and organ under Arthur Mason, organist of St James’ Church, Sydney 1898–1907, City Organist 1901–1907, and music correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. After several years taking occasional positions as church organist, he was in 1912 appointed organist and choral conductor to Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, Grafton. He married Gertrude Alice Peir (1886–1970) in Sydney in 1909; they had two sons. He enlisted with the 1st AIF on 5 May 1916, was gassed in France, transferred to the Pay Corps, London, in February 1917, and returned to Australia where he was honorably discharged in December 1917. While in London, he studied church music under Sir Frederick Bridge and Sir Richard Terry. and Mus. Doc. in 1934, the first Queensland musician to be so qualified. Dalley-Scarlett served with St. And

Robert Davidson (composer)

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Robert Davidson is an Australian composer and lecturer in music at the University of Queensland. Education He holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Queensland (UQ), a Graduate Diploma in Music from Griffith University, and a PhD from the University of Queensland. Musical career He was a bassist in the Opera Australia, Sydney Symphony and Queensland Symphony orchestras. Since 1997, Davidson has directed the post-classical quintet Topology, with whom he plays double bass and occasionally sings. He is co-artistic direction of the organisation. His works have been commissioned and performed by numerous international artists, such as the Brodsky Quartet, Australian String Quartet, Karin Schaupp, Southern Cross Soloists, Paul Dresher Ensemble (San Francisco), and Newspeak (New York). Some of his most well-known works using speech and music include “Not Now, Not Ever!” for choir with then prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard’s 2012 Misogyny Speech, and “Big Decisions”, which tells of the Whitlam dismissal. His research interests include the use of artificial intelligence in music. Recognition Davidson was a finalist in the Art Music Awards in 2013 (Instrumental Work of the

Robert Hughes (composer, born 1912)

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Robert Watson Hughes AO MBE (27 March 19121 August 2007) was a Scottish-born Australian composer. His melodies are driven by short motives and unrelenting ostinato figures. Hughes wrote orchestral works, music for ballet and film, some chamber works and an opera that has never been performed. While some of his works are available in published form, there are a number of well-crafted orchestral works that were recorded but never commercially published. Like other composers of his generation, including Dorian Le Gallienne, Raymond Hanson and Margaret Sutherland, Hughes has been considered by musicologists to write in a style reminiscent of the English pastoral school. However, Hughes listened to a wide range of music and surrounded himself with a variety of musical influences which included Debussy, Roussel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Sibelius and Bartók. Hughes was also a champion for other Australian composers, through roles that drew on his administrative skills. His own music has of recent times only infrequently been heard either in the concert hall or on recordings. However, his music was earlier championed by many notable conductors including Sir Bernard Heinze, Sir Eugene Goossen

Roger Mason (musician)

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Roger Ashley Mason is an Australian keyboardist who has been a member of new wave groups Models, Absent Friends and Icehouse. He was a session and backing musician for United Kingdom’s Gary Numan and for various Australian artists. From the early 1990s he has composed music for television and feature films. He appeared on Models best performed album, Out of Mind, Out of Sight (1985), which reached No. 3 on the Australian Kent Music Report Albums Chart and provided a No. 2 hit “Barbados” and a No. 1 hit “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”. On 27 October 2010, Models were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame by former member, Wendy Matthews. As a composer, Mason has won 12 Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Awards for his TV and film work, MDA (presented in 2003), The Extra (2005), Peking to Paris (2006), The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce (2009), My Place (2010), The Outlaw Michael Howe (2014), The Code (2015), The Principal (2016) and Hungry Ghosts (2021). Biography Early years Roger Ashley Mason These awards were incorporated into the APRA Music Awards as the Screen Music Awards from 2002 (see below). - APRA Music Awards The APRA Music Awards are presented annually from

Roger Smalley

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John Roger Smalley (26 July 1943 – 18 August 2015) was an Anglo-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley was a senior honorary research fellow at the School of Music, University of Western Australia in Perth and honorary research associate at the University of Sydney. Biography Smalley was born in Swinton, Lancashire, England. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Antony Hopkins (piano), Peter Racine Fricker and John White (both composition). In addition, he studied with Alexander Goehr at Morley College, and attended Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Cologne Course for New Music in 1965–66, as well as Pierre Boulez’s Darmstadt summer course in 1965. As a young composer, he was awarded the 1965 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for his orchestral work Gloria Tibi Trinitas. Smalley was appointed in 1967 as the first Composer in Residence at King’s College, Cambridge. In 1969 Smalley and his successor at King’s, Tim Souster, formed the live-electronic group Intermodulation. Over the next six years Intermodulation toured widely in the UK, West Germany, Poland, France and Iran, with a repertoire which included not only works by Souster and Smalley, but also

Romano Crivici

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Romano Crivici (1953) is an Australian violinist, pianist and composer. Romano Crivici is one of Australia’s only contemporary composers who is also a recognised contemporary classical performer on both violin and piano. Crivici, a former member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the New England String Quartet, has also worked widely as a repetiteur and conductor. However it has been his work as composer, director and violinist with his group Elektra String Quartet and Elektra Collektiv, that has made a unique contribution. The Elektra String Quartet, is best known for performing works by Crivici himself, as well as other Australian composers such as Nigel Westlake, Robert Davidson, Roger Dean, Mathew Hindson, Paul Stanhope, Martin Armiger, Ross Edwards and other contemporary works. Crivici founded the Elektra String Quartet in 1993 soon after leaving the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and created a disciplined and flexible ensemble that worked within many cross cultural art-forms. The ensemble featured works by Crivici himself as well as commissioning and performing works by some of Australia’s best known composers. His personal connection to the Australian landscape has inspired man

Ros Bandt

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Rosalie (Ros) Edith Bandt (born 18 August 1951 in Geelong) Bandt is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, composer, researcher and performer. Trained as a school teacher, Bandt went on to study chance music and completed her master’s degree in 1974 at Monash University with a thesis on the work of John Cage and later completed her PhD in 1983 also at Monash. In 1977 Bandt and Martin Harris created a sound installation, Winds and Circuits which fed audio into television signals to create electronic visual patterns. Since that time she pioneered interactive sound installations, sound sculptures, and created sound playgrounds, spatial music systems, and some 40 sound installations worldwide. A pioneer of interactive sound sculpture in Australia, she has exhibited in many Australian city and regional centres, including her work Sound Playground in Brunswick, Melbourne in 1981. Bandt performs on a wide variety of instruments including recorders, psaltry, percussion and the tarhu. She is a founding member of ensembles LIME, Back to Back Zithers, La Romanesca, Carte Blanche and the Free Music Ensemble. Awards Don Banks Music Award The Don Banks Music Award was established in 1984 to

Ross Edwards (composer)

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Ross Edwards (born 23 December 1943) is an Australian composer of a wide variety of music including orchestral and chamber music, choral music, children’s music, opera and film music. His distinctive sound world reflects his interest in deep ecology and his belief in the need to reconnect music with elemental forces, as well as restore its traditional association with ritual and dance. He also recognises the profound importance of music as an agent of healing. His music, universal in that it is concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding humanity, is at the same time connected to its roots in Australia, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, and from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, especially birdsong and the mysterious patterns and drones of insects. As a composer living and working on the Pacific Rim, he is aware of the exciting potential of this vast region. Early life and education Ross Edwards was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. His parents were Frank Edwards, an engineer, Edwards attended Sydney Grammar School, which did not offer music at the time. At 15 years of age, Edwards was granted permission to enter the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music

Roy Agnew

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Roy Ewing “Robert” Agnew (23 August 1891 – 12 November 1944) was an Australian composer, pianist, teacher, and radio announcer. He was described as “the most outstanding of the early twentieth-century Australian composers” by Morris Hinson. Early life and education Agnew was born in Sydney on August 23, 1891, the son of Samuel Agnew, a cordial manufacturer, and his wife Maria Jane (née Miller). His first music work to be published was Australian Forest Pieces for Piano in 1913. However, Agnew’s music did not receive much public attention until international pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch gave a recital of his works, Deirdre’s Lament and Dance of the Wild Men, at a Sydney Town Hall matinee in August 1920. Partly through funding by friends and supporters, Agnew was able to travel to London in 1923 to study composition and orchestration with Gerard Williams, Agnew also composed a second program, “Music Through the Ages: The Piano and its Composers,” featuring mostly classical composers such as Giles Farnaby, Domenico Scarlatti, Mozart, and Chopin, which Agnew played himself. In 1939, he won first prize for his sonata ballade from the Musical Association of New South Wales, which he later

Ruby Reynolds-Lewis

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Ruby Reynolds-Lewis (13 November 1881 – 13 December 1964) was an Australian composer. Her work “Foxhunt” was entered in the music event in the art competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics. She was the only Australian artist to compete in the Olympic arts competitions held from 1912 to 1948. Reynolds-Lewis dedicated her 1919 composition “Cradle Song” to artist and musician George Hyde Pownall. Although named a “song”, it was described as a piano solo and no words were published. She was a member of the Austral Salon during the 1930s. Personal life Born in South Yarra, Victoria, Australia, on 13 November 1881, In November 1901, she married Thomas Griffith Lewis at St Luke’s, South Melbourne. Her husband died in 1920, leaving her to provide for their four children, Hilary, Tom, and twins Valmai and Valerie. Selected compositions * “The Voice” * “Cradle Song”, 1919 * “Retrospection” * “Playing the Game”, 1923 * “Foxhunt”, 1924 * “Wattle Gold”, 1930 * “Honey Babe”, 1956 References External links * Sheet music for “The Voice” by Ruby Reynolds-Lewis from the National Library of Australia

Sally Greenaway

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Sally Greenaway (born 1984) is a composer and pianist based in Canberra, Australia. Career Greenaway trained in jazz at Canberra’s Australian National University School of Music and the Royal College of Music in London. After winning Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra’s National Big Band Composition Competition in 2008, Greenaway’s composition was recorded and broadcast on ABC Classic FM. She continued recording with several big bands and released her debut album Dig This: Exploring the Big Band in 2013. Her second album, Aubade & Nocturne, was released by ABC Classics in 2014. Gramophone likened it to the work of Peter Sculthorpe, Nigel Westlake, and other Australian composers. The Sydney Morning Herald gave it 4/5 stars and noted that, while it wasn’t thematically cohesive, it was “a rewarding experience”. In 2015 she won the inaugural Merlyn Myer Composing Women’s Commission, and was commissioned to create a new work which was performed by the Syzygy Ensemble at its premiere in 2016. The work The 7 Great Inventions of the Modern Industrial Age (dramatic music) later won the Canberra Critics Circle Awards and the APRA Art Music ACT Award for Instrumental Work of the Year. The Melbou

Scott Davie (pianist)

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Scott Davie (born 1966) is an Australian concert pianist based in Sydney. Davie is currently a piano lecturer at the ANU School of Music and is the director of the university’s Keyboard Institute. Biography Davie was born in 1966, in Orange, New South Wales, but moved to Sydney at a young age. He was a student at the Conservatorium High School, where he won numerous awards and prizes. He later studied as an undergraduate student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, before relocating to London, studying at the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He completed his undergraduate degree at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he later completed both masters and a PhD, focusing on melodic language of Sergei Rachmaninoff. His teachers include Gerard Willems, Leslie Howard and Geoffrey Parsons. Rachmaninoff manuscript discovery In 2003, while researching Rachmaninoff material at the Library of Congress, Davie discovered a two-page sketch of a Rachmaninoff piano piece. While he was able to make a pencil copy, it was not until later he realized that the sketch was complete. Davie was given permission to make use of the piece by the composer’s great-granddaughter, Natalie Wanamaker

Sean O'Boyle

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Sean Michael O’Boyle AM (born 1963) is an Australian composer and conductor. His River Symphony was performed by the Queensland Orchestra and released on ABC Classics in 2007 on a CD that also included Concerto for Didgeridoo composed with and recorded by William Barton. River Symphony was placed 85th in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Classic 100 Symphony, and Concerto for Didgeridoo was placed 87th in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Classic 100 Twentieth Century. O’Boyle became a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2015 Australia Day honours for “significant service to music as a composer, conductor, musician, performer and musical director.” Career O’Boyle has written for, conducted, directed and collaborated with many artists including Evelyn Glennie, Adam Lopez, James Morrison, The Whitlams, Tommy Emmanuel, Kate Ceberano, Yvonne Kenny, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, David Hobson, Riley Lee, David Campbell and Jane Rutter. He has twice received the ABC Golden Manuscript Award for his work as a composer and his projects have received numerous ARIA nominations and awards. In 2002, O’Boyle was featured exclusively at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) whe

Stephen Rae (composer)

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Douglas Stephen Rae (born 8 November 1961) is an Australian AFI award-winning composer, musician and actor. Over his 30 year career, Stephen Rae has composed music for a varied roster of television, film, theatre and advertising. He has created scores for several iconic Australian television series, including Love My Way, Puberty Blues, Gallipoli and Safe Harbour, for which he won the 2018 FIPA (Federation Internationale de production Audiovisuale) Gold Prize for his music. Stephen’s film credits include the 2020 feature documentary EL METIDO, as well as Mary (2016) The Turning, (2014), Temptation (2003), Blackjack (2003) THE ROAD FROM COORAIN (2002), The Well (1997), Dead Heart (1996), Mary (1995) and Traps (1994). He has won the Australian Film Institute (AACTA), the Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCC) and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC) awards for Best Screen Music. He has also won a CLIO (New York) for his work in advertising. He has composed music for theatre productions at Belvoir St Theatre and the Sydney Theatre Company. He has also worked as an actor in many productions with directors including Geoffrey Rush and Jim Sharman. Film and television Compositi

Stephen Whittington

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Stephen Whittington (born 13 August 1953) is an Australian composer, pianist, teacher and writer of music. Biography Whittington was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1953. He studied music at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, where his piano teacher was Clemens Leske Sr. In the 1970s Whittington began performing contemporary music in Adelaide, performing music by George Crumb, Christian Wolff, Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Howard Skempton, James Tenney, Alvin Curran, Alan Hovhaness, Terry Jennings, Peter Garland, Claude Vivier, Morton Feldman and other contemporary composers. He promoted the music of Australian composers, some of whom were resident in Adelaide, including Quentin Grant, David Kotlowy and Raymond Chapman-Smith, both solo and with the Breakthrough Piano Quartet. In 2011 Whittington played the music of Erik Satie at a concert held in the Elder Hall at the University of Adelaide. In addition to writing an essay on Vexations, he has participated in a number of performances, including Vienna (2009), and Annecy (2010). In 1988 Whittington produced the Breakthrough Festival, a 3-day event of experimental music at the Adelaide College of Arts and Education, which pres

Sven Libaek

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Sven Erik Libaek (born 20 September 1938) is a Norwegian-Australian composer, record producer and musician. He composes film and TV soundtrack music and, as the staff producer for the Australian division of CBS Records, influenced the Australian popular music scene in the mid-1960s. In 1982, an album titled Endless Love peaked at number 71 in Australia; his only top 100 charting release. Biography Libaek was born in Norway on 20 September 1938, trained as both a pianist and an actor and is a graduate of the Juilliard School in New York. He first achieved international recognition with a role in the Louis de Rochemont film Windjammer in which he both acted and performed as piano soloist with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Libaek first came to Australia in 1960 as a member of the band the Windjammers, which toured the United States and Australia to promote the film. Shortly after the group broke up, Libaek and his wife returned to Australia to live. Libaek lived and worked in Los Angeles from 1977 to 1994 where he orchestrated more than 300 popular songs for US radio stations and artists including Lionel Richie and Neil Diamond, and he also worked for the Hanna-Barbera

Sydney John Kay

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kurt Kaiser (3 November 1906 – 24 May 1970), better known as Sydney John Kay, was a German-born composer, musician and theatre entrepreneur. Biography Germany Born in Leipzig, Germany of Peruvian-Jewish descent, he originally pursued an engineering career in Berlin, but in 1927 he joined the German-Jewish showband The Weintraub Syncopators as a musician. He appeared with them supporting Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel (1930). After the Nazi’s came to power in 1933, the Syncopators went on a world tour, and were in Sydney when war was declared. Australian career Kaiser was interned during the early days of the war, but was eventually released, changing his name in honour of his new home, Sydney. He became musical director for the Colgate-Palmolive radio unit, and was involved in theatre, running Sydney’s Theatre for Children (1944–45) and co-founding the Mercury Theatre with Peter Finch. He produced the famous production of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid that was seen by Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh which led to them inviting Peter Finch to England. Kay also composed for various Australian films, documentaries, orchestras and ballets. Move to England He then moved to Englan

Tristram Cary

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Tristram Ogilvie Cary, OAM (14 May 192524 April 2008), was a pioneering English-Australian composer. He was also active as a teacher and music critic. Career Cary was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and Westminster School in London. He was the third son and child of a pianist and the Ulster-born novelist Joyce Cary, author of Mister Johnson. While working as a radar engineer for the Royal Navy during World War II, he independently developed his own conception of electronic and tape music, and is regarded as being amongst the earliest pioneers of these musical forms. With Peter Zinovieff and David Cockerell, he founded Electronic Music Studios (London) Ltd, which created the first commercially available portable synthesiser, the EMS VCS 3, and was then involved in the production of such distinctive EMS products as the EMS Synthi 100. In 1967 he created an electronic music studio at the Royal College of Music. ), as well as the score for the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955). Later film scores included The Boy Who Stole a Million (1960); The Prince and The Pauper (1962); Sammy Going South (1963); Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and Blood from the

Una Mabel Bourne

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Una Mabel Bourne (23 October 1882 – 15 November 1974) was an Australian pianist and composer. Early life Una Mabel Bourne was born at Mudgee, New South Wales, the daughter of James George Bourne and Margaret Webber Bourne. Her father was a shopkeeper. She was raised in Melbourne. Una Bourne’s musical abilities were evident early in life; she performed on piano in professional venues before her teens. She studied with Benno Scherek in Australia, and in several European cities as a young woman. Career “Miss Bourne has an excellent technique and plays with refinement and distinction,” an English critic wrote of a performance at London’s Bechstein Hall in 1906. Bourne joined Nellie Melba’s touring entourage in Australia in 1907, 1909, and 1912, both as an accompanist and performing solo. In 1915 she began making recordings with the English Gramophone Company. She also made player-piano rolls in the United States, and gave performances for women’s clubs and radio audiences. During World War II she was based in Melbourne again, where she performed and opened a conservatory. Personal life Una Mabel Bourne lived for many years with her friend and colleague, soprano Mona McCaughey, who died

Vanessa Corish

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Vanessa Corish is an Australian-born singer-songwriter and record producer. She has written songs for artists including Olivia Newton-John, Tina Arena, Wynonna Judd, Human Nature, Donny Osmond and Troy Cassar-Daley. Some of Corish’s most notable works include the US Country #1 “Now That I Found You”, recorded by Terri Clark,. and “Dare to Dream”, performed by Olivia Newton-John and John Farnham at the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, broadcast to an estimated global audience of 4.5 billion viewers. Career Corish co-wrote the US #1 Country song “Now That I Found You” with Paul Begaud and J.D. Martin. which was certified Platinum by the RIAA. The song was also included on Clark’s Greatest Hits 1994–2004, which is certified Gold by the RIAA. In 2022, Country Universe featured “Now That I Found You” in its retrospective series on every No. 1 country single of the 1990s, crediting Corish alongside Paul Begaud and J.D. Martin as co-writers. In a 2020 interview with ABC Radio, Corish reflected on writing “Dare to Dream” for the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games calling it “one of the greatest joys of my life,” and discussed the experience of hearing Olivi

Warren Burt

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Warren Burt (born 10 October 1949) is an Australia-based composer of American birth. He is known for composing in a wide variety of new music styles, ranging from acoustic music, electroacoustic music, sound art installations to text-based music. Burt often employs elements of improvisation, microtonality, humour, live interaction, and lo-fi electronic techniques in his music. Biography Warren Burt was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended the State University of New York, Albany (BA, 1971) and the University of California, San Diego (MA, 1975) before moving to Australia in 1975. In 1976, Burt, along with composer/performer Ron Nagorcka, established the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, in an old Organ factory building in Gold Street, Clifton Hill, Melbourne. In 1976–77, Burt toured his video/spoken/electronic opera Nighthawk in the USA. There were fourteen performances including at the University of Illinois, the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York, California Institute of the Arts, and Oberlin College. From 1977 to 1978 he and John Campbell produced the New and Experimental Music Show on radio 3CR. During this period, Burt and Australian composer Les Gilbert pub

William G. James

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

William Garnet James (28 August 1892 – 10 March 1977) was an Australian pianist and composer and a pioneer of music broadcasting in Australia. Early years James was born in Ballarat in 1892. He studied piano at the Melbourne University Conservatorium, graduating in 1912. On the recommendation of the visiting pianist Teresa Carreño, he headed overseas to study in London and Brussels with Arthur De Greef, a former pupil of Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns. It is around this period that James composed his Six Australian Bush Songs, which were dedicated to, and performed by, Dame Nellie Melba. After being rejected for military service, James worked for the British Red Cross during the World War I. In 1915, he made his public debut as a pianist with the Queen’s Hall Orchestra. By this time he had begun to publish his compositions, and in 1916 his ballet music By Candlelight was performed in concert at the Savoy Theatre, London. ABC career In 1923 James returned to Australia, in company with Stella Power, eventually taking up a teaching position at the Melbourne University Conservatorium. In the late 1920s, he joined the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Company, the forerunner of

William McKie (musician)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sir William Neil McKie (22 May 19011 December 1984) was an Australian organist, conductor, and composer. He was Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey 1941–1963 and noted for his direction of the music for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1947, and later her Coronation in 1953. Birth and studies William McKie was born in the suburb of Collingwood, Melbourne, the son of William McKie, who was vicar of Collingwood at the time; his brother was John McKie, Bishop of Geelong (coadjutor bishop in Melbourne). He studied the organ at Melbourne Grammar School under Dr Arthur Nickson (1876–1964), and in 1919 won the prestigious Clarke Scholarship from the University of Melbourne which enabled him to study at the Royal College of Music, London. Following this he became Organ Scholar of Worcester College, Oxford, where he gained his MA and BMus degrees. Early career In 1926 McKie took up his first professional appointment as Director of Music of Clifton College, Bristol, and is now perhaps the most famous of all Cliftonian organists. In 1930 he was selected by the Melbourne City Council to succeed W. G. Price as Melbourne City Organist and Musical Advisor to the City C

Zulya Kamalova

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Zulya Nazipovna Kamalova (; ; 8 August 1969 – 18 September 2024) was a Russian-born Australian singer. She resided in Australia though toured Europe frequently. Life and career Zulfia (Zulya) Kamalova was born in Sarapul but grew up in Tatarstan and began performing and writing music at age of 9. She was of Volga Tatar background. She left home at the age of 17 and eventually moved to the City of Perm to work in a factory and study English and French at the Perm Pedagogical Institute. Zulya and Andrew settled in Coburg in 2005, where their daughter, Zifa was born in 2006. two days before her sister Alfia arrived from Russia to see her. Instrumentation typically includes accordion, double bass, percussion, guitar, brass and string arrangements and occasionally jaw harp. She often combined Tatar with jazz or other folk music, which was novel for Tatar performers, and, at the same time, made the music easily accessible for international audience. Discography Albums Awards and nominations Kamalova is an Honored Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan. ARIA Music Awards The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genr