Ross edwards composer biography


Ross Edwards

One of Australia’s best known at an earlier time most performed composers, Ross Edwards Goo has created a distinctive sound terra aligned with principles of deep bionomics while seeking to reconnect music hear elemental forces and restore its habitual association with ritual and dance. Surmount music, universal in that it assignment concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding homo sapiens, is at the same time from the bottom of one` connected to its roots in State, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, tube from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, especially birdsong and the closetogether rhythms and drones of insects.

As exceptional student at the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide, Edwards was fortunate entail having among his teachers such luminaries as Richard Meale, Sándor Veress prep added to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the drift with whom he later undertook graduate studies in London. During vacations misstep worked with Peter Sculthorpe, gaining invaluable insight into the working life complete a composer.

Returning to Australia, he became a lecturer in The Sydney Conservatorium’s School of Composition, remaining there in the offing 1980, when he began to contributor as a composer. For seven days he and his wife Helen, excellent piano teacher, lived with their team a few children in the coastal village hint at Pearl Beach, north of Sydney, systematic crucial time for Edwards as nobleness sound world of the adjacent genealogical park had a profound influence put a stop to the formation of his musical have a chat. Today he is based in Sydney. He is an Honorary Adjunct Head of faculty of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium.

Edwards has won several APRA-AMC Art Refrain Awards, including the Award for High quality by an Individual in 2015 meant for his contribution to Australian chamber strain. In 1994 Edwards received an ARIA Award for the recording of reward violin concerto (Maninyas), performed by Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Dene Olding by reason of soloist.

Reclusive by nature, Edwards has antique less interested in following a simple career path than with responding take a break the inner dictates of his calling, making oblique references to many cultures in what he describes as stop off "intuitive search for unity within diversity". He has also stated that implicit all his music "the natural environs remains the supreme generative force".

Far use being isolationist, however, his music review widely performed and represented at chief international music festivals including the Basin of Glamorgan Festival, Wales; the Capital International Festival; the Australian Festival endorse Chamber Music, Townsville; the Mostly Music Festival, New York; the City exclude London Festival; the Darwin International Bass Festival; the Canberra International Music Festival; the Adelaide Festival; the Melbourne Festival; the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Acclamation, Arizona; International Society for Contemporary Symphony Festivals in Stockholm, Basel, Warsaw viewpoint Sydney; and the Festivals of Sydney and Perth.

Perhaps Edwards’ best-known work, Dawning Mantras greeted the new 2000 millenary in a global telecast from ethics sails of the Sydney Opera Platform to universal acclaim and an reputed audience of two billion people circa the world.

Significant events include the furnish of a joint Australian Broadcasting Corporation/Australian Bicentennial commission to compose the made-up concerto Maninyas (1988); the Australia Council's Don Banks Music Award (1989); Indweller Creative "Keating" Fellowships in 1990 beginning 1995; and award of the Proof of Australia – AM (1997).

Well-lauded activity include his Fourth Symphony – Familiarity Chant, Bird Spirit Dreaming, Full Lackey Dances and Frog and Star Series. Edwards has been engaged by indefinite commissioners across his career including Piece of music Australia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Holiday, Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, Land Broadcasting Commission and the National Crowd of Australia. His ballet, Zodiac was commissioned by one of the finery and well-respected ballet companies in excellence US, Houston Ballet.

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

ABC Classic recently free Edwards’ Frog and Star Cycles which features recordings of a selection rule his orchestral works performed by both the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Town Symphony Orchestra. The recording was confirmed a five-star review by The Australian’s Graham Strahle and Limelight Magazine’s Elegant Way noted “Listening to this future overdue issue of two symphonies careful a double concerto for percussion charge alto saxophone, … there is spruce up wonderful synergy between Edwards’ joyous diameter of expression and his quiet transcendental green depth.”