Composition and Music Technology - Staff
Chair/Senior Lecturer
Michael Smetanin, BMus PhD
Professor
Anne Boyd AM, HonDUniv DPhil York BA
Senior Lecturer
Matthew Hindson AM, MMus Melb BMus(Hons) PhD
Lecturers
Anthony Hood, BMus(Hons) MSc DPhil York
Trevor Pearce, BA BMus(Hons) PhD
Ivan Zavada, MMus(ElectroacousticComp) Montreal
Part-time staff
Judy Bailey OAM, ATCL
John Bassett
Nigel Butterley AM, HonDMus N'cle(NSW)
Amanda Cole, BMus
Roslyn Dunlop, BMus
Mary Finsterer, PhD Melb
Bradley Gill, BMus(Hons)
Terumi Narushima, GradDipEd(Sec) MMus
Anna Pimokhova, MA(Composition) MA(Conducting) NatAcadMusic,
Kief MMus PhD
Damien Ricketson, BMus PGradCert RoyalConsHague PhD
Robert Sazdov, MMus(MusEd) AMusA DipAE
Chair/Senior Lecturer
Michael Smetanin, BMus PhD
Chair of the Composition and Music Technology unit, composer Michael Smetanin is one of the most distinctive figures in Australian music today.
During the early 1980s Smetanin travelled to Holland to study for three years with the composer Louis Andriessen. There he composed The Ladder of Escape (1984) for Harry Sparnaay’s Het Basklarienetten Kollektief — it premiered at the 1984 Salzburg Aspekete Festival in Austria.
Smetanin has been involved not only in the composition of chamber and orchestral music but also in theatre and opera. His largest works are the chamber operas The Burrow and Gauguin and the 2000 Adelaide Festival premiere of the music for the epic eight-hour long play The Ecstatic Bible by English playwright Howard Barker. The Piano Concerto entitled Mysterium Cosmographicum was premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2005 and was awarded Best New Australian work at the 2006 APRA/AMC Music Awards. More recently his large chamber orchestra work Microgrphia was premiered in Amsterdam by the Schoenberg ensemble conducted by Reinbert De Leeuw. Smetanin is slated to begin work on a large music-theatre project with the Dutch ensemble Orkest de Volharding in late 2007.
Professor
Professor
Anne Boyd AM, HonDUniv DPhil York BA
Anne Boyd, Chair of the Arts Music unit at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, is one of Australia’s most distinguished composers and music educators.
Her research focuses on the influences of landscape and Asian music upon Australian composers. Recent publications include: ‘Landscape, Spirit and Music – An Australian Story’ in The Soundscapes of Australia (ed. Fiona Richards, Ashgate: 2007) and ‘Dreaming Voices: Australia and Japan’ in Intercultural Music: Creation and Interpretation (ed. Macarthur, Crossman and Morelos, Australian Music Centre: 2006).
In 1990, Boyd became the first Australian and the first woman to be appointed Professor of Music at the University of Sydney. Prior to that Boyd was the Foundation Head of the Department of Music at the University of Hong Kong from 1981–90 and taught at the University of Sussex from 1972–77.
Professor Boyd’s music is published by Faber Music in London and the University of York Music Press. Two solo CDs of her music are Meditations on a Chinese Character (ABC Classics, 1997) and Crossing a Bridge of Dreams (Tall Poppies, 2000). Her most recently commissioned works include Gate of Water for the ‘Kammer Ensemble’; Angry Earth, a concerto for shakuhachi (Riley Lee) and the Sydney Youth Orchestra and Ex Deo Lux for the 2007 SSO Fellows.
Professor Boyd was honoured with an AM in the Order of Australia in 1996 and an HonDUniv from York for her services to composition and music education in 2003. In 2005 she received the Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award at the APRA-AMC Classical Music Awards ceremony.
Senior Lecturer
Matthew Hindson AM, MMus Melb BMus(Hons) PhD
Matthew Hindson is a composer and Senior Lecturer in Composition & Media Technology and Arts Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His research interests include Australian music, music for video games (particularly for the Nintendo Entertainment System) and musical composition with Apple’s GarageBand.
Hindson studied composition at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne with Peter Sculthorpe, Eric Gross, Brenton Broadstock and Ross Edwards and his compositional influences range from classicism to the heavy metal band Metallica. One of the most distinctive composers of his generation, Hindson’s pieces are performed regularly both nationally and internationally. He has worked in close collaboration with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Youth Orchestra; has been featured extensively by Musica Viva Australia, the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Wales and Ballett Schindowski in Germany; and was the Queensland Orchestra's Composer in Residence for 2005.
Hindson has co-authored a composition text for senior high school and early tertiary music students called Composition Toolbox, and is Artistic Director of the Aurora Festival of New Music.
http://www.hindson.com.au/
Lecturers
Ivan Zavada, MMus(ElectroacousticComp) Montreal
Ivan Zavada is a composer, multimedia programmer and designer who lectures in computer music composition and electroacoustic theory at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His research focus is on the interactive relationship between image and sound within the realm of electroacoustic music. He is currently developing a computer application to represent and generate melodic motifs in three dimensions based on their geometric properties.
Zavada creates innovative multi-sensorial events that incorporate sophisticated audiovisual techniques to express artistic individuality in the digital era. The work InEx premiered in Beijing at the 2006 Musicacoustica Festival and is an example of the vast creative potential available through new mediums of artistic expression. This real-time performance for voice, computer and visual interpretation is based on a blending approach of traditional and urban connotations.
In general, Zavada’s work questions the conceptual nature of music by examining the relationship between concrete sounds on fixed recorded medium and visual elements of abstraction rendered in computer graphics. The combination of sound and image in multiple layers challenges the medium’s representational paradigm with the use of modern technology and makes electroacoustic composition and multimedia applications particularly interesting and significant today.
Zavada studied electroacoustic composition at the University of Montreal. He has also composed a number of soundtracks for documentaries and feature films. He is also an accomplished violinist who has performed and recorded with various music ensembles in Canada and the United States.
Part-time Staff
Damien Ricketson, BMus PGradCert RoyalConsHague PhD
Award-winning Composer Damien Ricketson teaches in the composition, musicology and music education units at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Ricketson recently completed his doctorate in composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he also studied at the Conservatorium as an undergraduate. He lived for a number of years in Europe, studying composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with renowned Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, working in both The Netherlands and Poland and completing IRCAM’s computer music course in Paris.
Dr. Ricketson is the Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring,
a Sydney-based group dedicated to the performance of challenging new work. Performances of Ricketson’s own music by the Ensemble Offspring have met with critical success, as have performances from ensembles such as MusikFabrik, soloist Peter Hörr (Germany), Crash Ensemble (Ireland), the Orfeuz Chamber Orchestra (Poland), 175 East, Stroma (New Zealand), Drumming Grupo de Percussão (Portugal), pianist Naomi Edemariam (Canada), Ensemble Plus-Minus (UK/Belgium), the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Alpha Ensemble, Libra Ensemble, Grainger Quartet and the Sydney Conservatorium Orchestra (Australia). His music has also been featured in festivals such as the Sydney Spring, Gaudeamus Music Week (The Netherlands), Warsaw Autumn (Poland), IAMIC (New Zealand) and the Transit Festival (Belgium).
Notable awards include the International Lady Panufnik Award (Poland) for Chinese Whisper, a Marienberg Spring Award for an ‘Outstanding Australian composition’ for Ptolemy’s Onion, and Lamina (a composition that was selected to represent Australian music at the Paris International Rostrum.) Ricketson has also been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre (Canada), the Bundanon Estate (Shoalhaven), the University of Wollongong and the Peggy Glanville-Hicks House (Sydney).
For more information on the compositions of Damien Ricketson see:
http://www.curiousnoise.com and
http://www.ensembleoffspring.org.au/
Mary Finsterer, PhD Melb
Mary Finsterer is one of Australia’s most celebrated composers. She lecturers in composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
In recent years, Finsterer has become increasingly involved in film, composing notated scores and electro–acoustic soundscapes as part of multimedia events for the Zagrab Biennale in 1999 and 2005; Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne for the Adelaide Festival, Strasbourg and Montreal in 2000, Ensemble Intercontemporain and IRCAM for the George Pompidou Centre in Paris 2001; and the acclaimed Ictus Ensemble for performance in Lille and Brussels 2004. In 2006 she received a Churchill Fellowship for her continuing work in the film industry and earlier this year composed music for the recently released Hollywood movie Die Hard 4. Finesterer also teaches at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Finsterer has won numerous other awards including the Albert H. Maggs Award, Alfred S. Bequest, ‘Let’s Celebrate OZ Music’ ABC Award 1989 and Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s Forum 91. In 1992 she won the Paris Rostrum Prize and ‘Music Lives!’ in Pittsburgh. In that same year she was composer-in-residence with Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In 1998 Mary received the Australia Council Composer Fellowship. She has represented Australia in five ISCM World Music Day Festivals: Zurich 1991, Essen 1995, Manchester 1998, Bucharest 1999 and Zagreb 2005 and also received the prestigious award to compose for Ensemble Intercontemporain and IRCAM in 2001.
Performances of her work have taken place throughout Europe, Canada, USA and Australia by leading ensembles including all of the major Australian symphony orchestras, Het Trio, Ensemble Modern, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, The New Juilliard Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble, De Volharding and the Arditti String Quartet.
She holds a Bachelor of Music, Master of Music and a PhD from the University of Melbourne and studied with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam as the recipient of the 1993 Royal Netherlands Government Award. Before returning to Australia in 2002, she taught at the University of Montreal (Canada), Dusquene University (Pittsburgh, USA), University of Wollongong and the Victorian College of the Arts.
Her music can be heard on the double–disc compilation entitled CATCH, which was released in 2003 on the ABC Classics label.
www.maryfinsterer.com
