Stuart Greenbaum’s music presents a crossover between classical and popular styles – particularly jazz and minimalism. His music invokes an atmosphere apart from the routine of modern life. Since 1985, he has worked closely with Australian poet, Ross Baglin. Most notably on the opera, Nelson.

He was born in 1966 in Melbourne and studied with Brenton Broadstock and Barry Conyngham. He was the first candidate to graduate with a PhD in composition from the University of Melbourne, where he also teaches composition. He grew up with popular music (rock, blues and jazz) as well as the Western classical tradition, and is interested in the ‘cross-over’ and points of commonality between these apparently different musical worlds.

When I compose, I write music that I want to hear. I seek sounds in time which reflect who I am and how I feel about the world I live in. I like to write music which has an attractive surface on a first hearing, but has some level of mystery which does not reveal all of itself so quickly.

Recent major works include an orchestral cycle (premiered in Russia by the Krasnoyarsk Philharmonic), a major choral work, The Foundling (Cantori New York, NY) and an opera based on the life of Nelson (Spitalfields Market Opera, London). Songs from the opera were performed by Simone Young, Jeffrey Black and Aubrey Murphy as part of Opera Australia’s 2002 recital series at the NSW Art Gallery. He has won a number of awards, including the Heinz Harant Prize for Best New Australian Composition, and the Albert H. Maggs Award. The commission for the latter (a saxophone sonata) was premiered in May 2003 as part of a recent ‘Greenbaum Retrospective’ in Melbourne.


Biography courtesy of www.stuartgreenbaum.com

Roger Smalley was born near Manchester, England in 1943. At the Royal College of Music, London, he studied piano with Antony Hopkins and composition with Peter Racine Fricker and John White. He also took private composition lessons with Alexander Goehr and furthered his studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen on the Cologne Course for New Music.

Widely recognised for his performances of contemporary piano music, Roger Smalley was a prize–winner in the International Competition for Interpreters of Contemporary Music (Utrecht, 1966) and received the Harriet Cohn International Music Award for contemporary music performance in 1968.

In 1969, together with Tim Souster, he formed Intermodulation, an ensemble specialising in works involving improvisation and live electronics, which performed throughout England and Europe until 1976.

In 1968 he was appointed first Artist–in–Residence at King's College Cambridge where he subsequently held a three–year research fellowship. He spent three months as Composer–in–Residence at the University of Western Australia in 1974, returning two years later to become a research fellow and subsequently Associate Professor of Music.

He continues to perform a wide variety of solo and chamber music and has recorded CDs of Australian piano music and Schumann song–cycles (with Gerald English) for the Tall Poppies label. Since 1989 he has been Artistic Director and conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra's 20th Century Ensemble. In 1991 he was the recipient of a Creative Development Award from the West Australian Department for the Arts, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 1994 he was awarded the Australia Council's prestigious Don Banks Fellowship "in recognition of his distinguished contribution to Australian music." In 1995 he was Composer–in–Residence with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

Roger Smalley's compositions have been performed and broadcast world–wide. He has been commissioned by many organisations and groups, including the BBC, ABC, West German Radio, Festival of Perth, London Sinfonietta, Fires of London, Flederman, Nova Ensemble, Seymour Group and Australia Ensemble. His Piano Concerto, a BBC commission for European Music Year (1985), was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's entry in the annual International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO) in Paris, 1987. It won the top recommendation, the first time an Australian entry was declared the 'recommended' work.


Biography courtesy of Australian Music Centre - Biography compiled from information provided by the composer, with additional information from the Biographical Directory of Australian Composers (Australian Music Centre, 1996)