Composers
Dan Walker has been composer in residence since 2006 for Moorambilla. He has had works commissioned and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, The Song Company, Gondwana Voices, Queensland Youth Choir, the Murrumbidgee Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. He is the current Assistant Conductor for Sydney Children's Choir and Gondwana Voices. As a performer, Dan is a regular member of both Sydney Chamber Choir and Cantillation. He has also been a member of Pinchgut Opera, and is currently also a guest member of the Song Company.
Read Dan's words on the Moorambilla experience
After an increasingly musical adolescence, Gerard Brophy began his studies in the classical guitar at the age of 22. In the late seventies he worked with Brazilian guitarist Turibio Santos and the Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel before entering the NSW State Conservatorium of Music to study composition.
He has been commissioned and performed by some of the world's leading ensembles - the St.Louis, Melbourne, Queensland, Tasmanian, West Australian and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, the NZ Symphony Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest, Icebreaker, Nash Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Slagwerkgroep Den Haag, ANUMADUTCHI, Synergy Percussion, Het Trio, Ensemble Modern, Chicago Pro Musica, Bang on a Can, ChamberMade Opera, the ASKO Ensemble, Ensemble l'Itineraire, Duo Contemporain, Topology and 2E2M to name some of them. His music appears on over 30 CDs and is regularly broadcast in Europe, Japan, United States and Australia.
Over the years he has developed an express interest in collaborating with artists from other disciplines and he is now particularly active in the areas of dance and theatre. He has also been involved in exciting collaborations with musicians from other cultures, among them the great Senegalese master drummers, the N'Diaye Rose family, timbila virtuoso Venancio Mbande from Mozambique and Balinese gamelan players.
Recent performance highlights include a hugely successful season of his ballet Yo Yai Pakebi, Man Mai Yapobi, choreographed by Regina van Berkel and performed by the Residentie Orkest and the Nederlands Dans Theater, the score/sound design for the Queensland Theatre Company's production of Oedipus the King, and national and international tours of his theatre-work Phobia by ChamberMade Opera. Among his current and upcoming performances are the Australian premiere of his guitar concerto Concerto in Blue performed by Craig Ogden and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the premiere of his new ballet Wind Around My Heart for the GoteborgsOperan, choreographed by Regina van Berkel, which opens in March 2007. He is currently working on Cities of God for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonic Choir and Samsara for Synergy, Taikoz, the shakuhachi virtuoso Riley Lee and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Bio courtesy of the Australian Music Centre
Paul Stanhope (b. 1969) is recognised as a leading composer of his generation not only in Australia but also internationally, with performances of his works in the UK, Europe, Japan and the United States. After studies with Andrew Ford, Andrew Schultz and Peter Sculthorpe in Australia, Paul was awarded the Charles Mackerras Scholarship which enabled him to study for a time at the Guildhall School of Music in London.
He writes: “My music presents the listener with an optimistic, personal geography . . . whether this is a reaction to the elemental aspects of the universe (both the celestial and terrestrial) or the throbbing energy of the inner-city”.
In May 2004 Paul’s international standing was confirmed when he was awarded first place in the prestigious Toru Takemitsu Composition Prize. In 2011 he was awarded two APRA/Australian Music Centre Awards for Instrumental Work of the Year (String Quartet No. 2) and Vocal/Choral Piece of the Year (Deserts of Exile) and prior to that was awarded the Albert H. Maggs Award from the University of Melbourne for his String Quartet No. 1 in 2010.
In 2009 Paul was featured composer Vale of Glamorgan Festival in the Wales, where his music was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. In 2010 he was Musica Viva’s featured composer: Paul’s String Quartet no. 2 received nation-wide performances by the Pavel Hass Quartet as part of this season as did his Agnus Dei (After the Fire) for violin and piano, performed by the stellar duo Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien. Other choral and chamber works received national tours by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Atos Piano Trio from Berlin.
Some of Paul’s newest compositions have focused on vocal and chamber music forms. His choral work Exile Lamentations (2007-2008), which was initially co-commissioned and performed by the Elysian Singers of London and the Melbourne Symphony Chorus, was recently extended into a cantata-length work in a collaborative project with oud player Joseph Tawadros and performed in its entirety by the Sydney Chamber Choir which he also directs. Recent orchestral pieces include Cloudforms (2007) commissioned by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Machinations (2006)for the Melbourne Symphony. Paul is composing new works for the Adelaide Chamber Singers and ACO2 for performance in 2011.
Paul Stanhope teaches composition part-time at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and at MLC School in Sydney.
Paul's photograph © Karen Steins
Elena Kats-Chernin is one of the most cosmopolitan composers working today, having reached millions of listeners worldwide through her prolific catalogue of works for theater, ballet, orchestra, and chamber ensemble. Her dramatically vivid music communicates a mixture of lightheartedness and heavy melancholy, combining strong rhythmic figures with elements of cabaret, tango, ragtime, and klezmer.
Born in 1957 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Kats-Chernin received training at the Gnesin Musical College before immigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the New South Wales Conservatory in 1981 and was awarded a DAAD (German academic exchange) grant to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in 1994 to Australia where she now lives in Sydney.
One of Australia’s leading composers, Elena Kats-Chernin has created works in nearly every genre. Among her many commissions are pieces for Evelyn Glennie, Ensemble Modern, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Sequitur, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Present Music, and the North Carolina Symphony.
Her brilliantly scored, energetic, and often propulsive music has been choreographed by dance-makers around the world. In 2000 she collaborated with leading Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard in a series of large-scale dance works. The first of these, "Deep Sea Dreaming", was broadcast to an audience of millions worldwide as part of the opening ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
Recent works include the concerto for basset horn and chamber orchestra Ornamental Air which has been toured internationally by Michael Collins, the opera The Rage of Life, staged in Belgium, Holland, Hungary and Germany last year, and Re-collecting ASTORoids, an orchestral suite inspired by the music of Tango Nuevo master Astor Piazzolla, which received its first complete performance by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in February 2011.
Kats-Chernin's music continues to be heard on TV and at the cinema in the UK with the long-running Lloyds TSB advertising campaign "For the journey…" employing the Eliza Aria from her ballet Wild Swans.
In 2011 Kats-Chernin was appointed Composer-in-Residence with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.
Elena Kats-Chernin's music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.
Katy Abbott (b. 1971) is a widely performed and published composer whose work has been performed in both Australia and overseas by various leading ensembles, including Halcyon, The Song Company, Syzygy Ensemble, Craig Hultgren (US), Collision Theory and several major symphony orchestras. Her music has also featured at popular Australian International Festivals and the International Alliance of Women in Music (IAWM) conference in Beijing as well as performances in Europe, China, USA, Canada and New Zealand.
Abbott creates music that can be described as contemporary classical, drawing from diverse influences. She has a talent for highlighting the musical and poignant moments in daily human life that might otherwise seem mundane. Her latest compositions have also been exploring the concept of home and a sense of place (The Empty Quarter (2008), This Is My Home (2009)).
