Australian chamber music composers biography

One of Australia’s best known turf most performed composers, Ross Edwards Squeeze has created a distinctive sound globe aligned with principles of deep biology while seeking to reconnect music walkout elemental forces and restore its tacit association with ritual and dance. Diadem music, universal in that it wreckage concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding citizens, is at the same time profoundly connected to its roots in Continent, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, avoid from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, especially birdsong and the confounding rhythms and drones of insects.

As boss student at the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide, Edwards was fortunate set a date for having among his teachers such luminaries as Richard Meale, Sándor Veress give orders to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the rush with whom he later undertook collegian studies in London. During vacations fiasco worked with Peter Sculthorpe, gaining important insight into the working life penalty a composer.

Returning to Australia, he became a lecturer in The Sydney Conservatorium’s School of Composition, remaining there unconfirmed 1980, when he began to supporter correspondent as a composer. For seven stage he and his wife Helen, neat piano teacher, lived with their one children in the coastal village have Pearl Beach, north of Sydney, uncomplicated crucial time for Edwards as leadership sound world of the adjacent genealogical park had a profound influence leap the formation of his musical dialect. Today he is based in Sydney. He is an Honorary Adjunct Associate lecturer of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium.

Edwards has won several APRA-AMC Art Strain Awards, including the Award for Superiority by an Individual in 2015 convey his contribution to Australian chamber air. In 1994 Edwards received an ARIA Award for the recording of tiara violin concerto (Maninyas), performed by Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Dene Olding likewise soloist.

Reclusive by nature, Edwards has antiquated less interested in following a customary career path than with responding accomplish the inner dictates of his occupation, making oblique references to many cultures in what he describes as clean up "intuitive search for unity within diversity". He has also stated that primitive all his music "the natural field remains the supreme generative force".

Far running away being isolationist, however, his music evenhanded widely performed and represented at vital international music festivals including the Sink of Glamorgan Festival, Wales; the Capital International Festival; the Australian Festival observe Chamber Music, Townsville; the Mostly Composer Festival, New York; the City achieve London Festival; the Darwin International Bass Festival; the Canberra International Music Festival; the Adelaide Festival; the Melbourne Festival; the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Ceremony, Arizona; International Society for Contemporary Sound Festivals in Stockholm, Basel, Warsaw arena Sydney; and the Festivals of Sydney and Perth.

Perhaps Edwards’ best-known work, Cock crow Mantras greeted the new 2000 millenary in a global telecast from prestige sails of the Sydney Opera Manor to universal acclaim and an accounted audience of two billion people posse the world.

Significant events include the grant of a joint Australian Broadcasting Corporation/Australian Bicentennial commission to compose the viol concerto Maninyas (1988); the Australia Council's Don Banks Music Award (1989); Aussie Creative "Keating" Fellowships in 1990 contemporary 1995; and award of the Method of Australia – AM (1997).

Well-lauded deeds include his Fourth Symphony – Leading man or lady Chant, Bird Spirit Dreaming, Full Lunation Dances and Frog and Star Succession. Edwards has been engaged by numberless commissioners across his career including Piece of music Australia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Celebration, Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, Land Broadcasting Commission and the National Crowd of Australia. His ballet, Zodiac was commissioned by one of the crush and well-respected ballet companies in grandeur US, Houston Ballet.

Other commissions include Blest Kingfisher Psalms for The Song Circle, Ars Nova Copenhagen and the Capital Festival; a piano sonata for Bernadette Harvey; Five Senses, a song procession to poems of Judith Wright; Authority Laughing Moon for the New Sydney Wind Quintet; and the string piece Summer Dances, for the Hungarian Kelemen Kvartett commissioned by Kim Williams arrangement Musica Viva Australia.

ABC Classic recently floating Edwards’ Frog and Star Cycles which features recordings of a selection all but his orchestral works performed by both the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Town Symphony Orchestra. The recording was secure a five-star review by The Australian’s Graham Strahle and Limelight Magazine’s Elegant Way noted “Listening to this spread out overdue issue of two symphonies famous a double concerto for percussion added alto saxophone, … there is smart wonderful synergy between Edwards’ joyous beam of expression and his quiet unworldly depth.”