Australian composers
Ros Bandt
Ros Bandt is a composer performer and sound artist who is passionate about combining ancient and modern sonic practices. Her sound research has included building a medieval Pythagorean recorder and she directs the Australian sound design project on line at the Australian centre, The University of Melbourne.
Brenton Broadstock
Brenton Broadstock is now one of Australia's most well established, respected and successful mid-generation composers.
Barry Conyngham
Born in Sydney Australia, Barry Conyngham has received numerous awards, prizes and grants for composition, including Churchill (1970), Harkness (1972-74), Australia Council (1974-5), and Senior Fulbright (1982) Fellowships. He has an ARIA, two Sounds Australian Critics Awards and two Maggs Awards.
George Dreyfus
One of Australia's best known composers, especially the theme from the TV series "Rush", George Dreyfus was recently awarded a the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany at the Victorian Parliament House, for services to music.
Eve Duncan
Eve Duncan has composed chamber, orchestral and vocal music, and her work has been presented in many festivals in Australia, Asia and Europe.
Helen Gifford
Like Sculthorpe and Grainger before her, Australian composer Helen Gifford has found inspiration in the gamelan and Balinese music.
Tony Gould
Pianist and composer Tony Gould is one of Australia’s most respected musicians. His career has embraced many styles of music, not least jazz and other improvisatory musics in addition to traditional and contemporary classical musics. He gives many concerts each year and for 50 years he has been involved in an extraordinary number of recording projects both as pianist and composer and has been at the forefront of music education in Australia via various tertiary institutions in Melbourne and throughout Australia.
Percy Grainger
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) is one of Australia's best known composers. A brilliant arranger of folk music but also a pioneer in percussion and electronic music, Grainger's Warriors was recently heard in the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Michael Kieran Harvey
Australian pianist and composer, Dr Michael Kieran Harvey FAHA, is one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary piano music of his generation. A champion of Australian music and himself a composer, he regularly commissions new Australian music and has performed with Australia's leading contemporary music ensembles and orchestras.
Paul Moulatlet
Paul Moulatlet is a Melbourne-based Australian composer whose works have been performed in England, Italy, Norway, the USA and numerous Australian events, including the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and Federation Music Week: Contemporary Music of Australia and the Asia Pacific.
Ron Nagorcka
Ron Nagorcka has a long-held interest in the sounds of the Australian bush (in particular its birds), the use of electronics in music and the system of tuning known as just intonation. His recordings of nature in Tasmania and in the arid zones of mainland Australia provide the basis for many of his compositions.
Mark Pollard
Australian composer Mark Clement Pollard has an eclectic compositional style utilising such diverse materials as, improvisation, jazz, pop and the indigenous music’s of South East Asia.
Thomas Reiner
Artistic Director of the ensemble re-sound, Thomas Reiner has received numerous awards for his compositions, including second prize in the International Witold Lutoslawski Composers' Competition for Two Movements for Orchestra, the Dorian Le Gallienne Award, and in 1995 the Albert H Maggs Composition Award.
John Sangster
John Sangster was one of the most talented Australian jazz musicians of all time, a technician and creator who embraced and understood more styles of music than any other.
Peter Sculthorpe
Born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1929 and passing away in 2014, Peter Sculthorpe was one of Australia's best-known composers and a fine pianist. Recordings of Sculthorpe's orchestral works and music for strings have won a number of Australian Record Industry Awards (ARIA).
Larry Sitsky
Larry Sitsky's activities as a composer, pianist, writer, broadcaster and teacher place him inevitably to the fore among today's ambassadors of contemporary Australian piano music. Through his work to date he has made a significant contribution to the Australian music tradition.
Margaret Sutherland
Margaret Sutherland (1897 – 1984) was an Australian composer, probably the best-known female composer her country has produced.
Lawrence Whiffin
Lawrence Whiffin was born in Melbourne in 1930, and passed away in November 2012. He spent much of his life abroad. In 1976 Whiffin was appointed Senior Tutor at the Music Department of La Trobe University. This position entailed the teaching of harmony, counterpoint, analysis, form and fugue, and gave him the chance to compose more concert music.
Julian Yu
The multi-award winning Australian composer Julian Yu employs a musical language imbued with a high degree of elegance and expressiveness, which are both enhanced by an impeccable craft and special attention to detail.
