Gondwana Composers

Pianist and Composer Sally Whitwell maintains a busy and eclectic musical existence from her base in Sydney.  

As a solo performer, she has recorded five albums to date with ABC Classic, garnering between them 8 ARIA nominations and 3 wins. She is known particularly for her interpretations of the piano works of American minimalist Philip Glass, her debut album Mad Rush leading to invitations to premiere Glass’s Etudes for Solo Piano at Perth International Arts Festival, Center for the Art of Performance UCLA, and at Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music. In a five star review of her recording of Glass’s Etudes in Limelight Magazine, Sally is described as “one of Australia’s finest solo performers”. 

Sally has composed for many vocal ensembles including Adelaide Chamber Singers (2020 Composer in Residence), The Consort of Melbourne, The Australian Voices, Divisi Chamber Singers, The House That Dan Built, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Moorambilla Voices, Brisbane Birralee, BachChor Salzburg and Juice Vocal (London). She has also created instrumental works for Phoenix Central Park, Ensemble Offspring, Acacia Quartet, Plexus Ensemble, Homophonic, Emily Granger (harp) and Alicia Crossley (recorders). A new work ‘Starwalker’ commissioned by guitarist Matt Withers will be released on ABC Classic in late 2022. 

Sally’s newest recording is a vocal chamber music work, an LGBTQIA+ pride-flag themed song cycle Spectrum, released by Divisi Chamber Singers. She is currently working on a short film comedy musical Sparky about a woman plumber, and also a new setting of the poetry of Gwen Harwood for Katie Noonan and the Australian Vocal Ensemble. 

Following postgraduate research in literature at the University of NSW (BA Hons, MA Hons), Michael studied music at the University of Sydney and the University of New England, where he was attracted to ethnomusicology.

He researched cultural history at UTS Sydney (PhD). He played early music in the Renaissance Players (1974-1980); joined Rivendell as a music therapist (1978-80) in the team of Professor Marie Bashir; pioneered cross-cultural music in Sirocco (1980-6); and directed his own ensemble, Southern Crossings (1986-93). He performed overseas for Musica Viva and appeared at major festivals prior to his appointment in 1993 as the Foundation Chair of Music at UWS, where he led the development of teaching and research with a focus on a range of Australian expressions in our time.

Michael is considered an expert in musical instruments and sound making objects, especially those of Australia and the Asia-Pacific. He is also composer, performer and researcher with broad experience in music for the concert hall, film, television and radio. Michael has made numerous CD recordings, documentary film scores and television themes, including the station music for TVS. In 2008 he was a featured composer in the Aurora Festival, with five world premières.

He is an elected fellow (FRSA) of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. His awards include a Centenary Medal (2003) for service to the community, and a Vice Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence (2008) in research training and supervision. In 2009 he co-edited Music of the Spirit: Asian-Pacific Music Identities. Michael is also a member of SynC, an electroacoustic duo with Garth Paine. Performance highlights include: Aurora Festival 2008; New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) opening concert, New York, June 2007; and NIME/Agora Resonances, Paris, 2006. Michael’s most recent book publication is Musical Instruments and Sound Producing Instruments of Oceania (2010). In 2012, he was a guest artistic director at the Powerhouse Discovery Centre, composing music for public events, including a spectacle for motorbikes, drum kits, synthesizers, brass, and voices.

He retired from the University of Western Sydney at the end of 2012 and was honoured with the title, Emeritus Professor, for his distinguished contribution to teaching and research in the field of music and service to the University over many years. Michael’s book Australian Made, Australian Played was re-released in 2014 by Vivid/Fontaine as an e-book. And he recently completed a commission for Gondwana Choirs – a choral opera entitled, Walking in Footsteps.

Repertoire

The Mahogany Ship
Songs for Imberombera
Kalliopeia Sopha
Magpies

One of Australia’s best known and most performed composers, Ross Edwards has created a distinctive sound world based on deep ecology and awareness of the need to reconnect music with elemental forces and restore its traditional association with ritual. His music, universal in that it is concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding humanity, is at the same time connected to its roots in Australia, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, and from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, especially birdsong and the mysterious patterns and drones of insects. As a composer living and working on the Pacific Rim, he is conscious of the exciting potential of this vast region.

Edwards has composed prolifically in most musical genres.

Works for the concert hall sometimes require special lighting, movement, costume and visual accompaniment – notably his Fourth Symphony, Star Chant, his oboe concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming and his saxophone concerto Full Moon Dances. His Dawn Mantras greeted the new millennium in an international telecast from the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Recently completed works include Frog and Star Cycle, a double concerto for saxophonist Amy Dickson, percussionist Colin Currie, and the Sydney Symphony, Zodiac for the Houston Ballet, Entwinings, for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Bright Birds and Sorrows, a quintet for Amy Dickson and the (British) Elias String Quartet, Dances of Life and Death for the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony, and a Piano Quartet for the Australia Piano Quartet.

Ross Edwards’ scores are available worldwide through the Australian Music Centre.

Repertoire

Dawn Canticle
Dawn Mantras
Miracles
Symphony No. 5: Promised Land

Works by Alice Chance are becoming well-known in Australia and beyond. Ensembles which have commissioned or premiered her work include The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, The Song Company, Musica Viva for the Enigma String Quartet, Sydney Conservatorium Early Music Ensemble, The Australia Piano Quartet, The Leichhardt Espresso Chorus, The Birralee Blokes,The Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship, Adelaide Chamber Singers, Luminscence Chamber Singers, The Australian Boys Choir, The Sydney Children’s Choir, The Australian Youth Choir and Sydney Youth Orchestras.

Alice has completed composition residencies in India and the USA, and worked as composer in residence with the Moorambilla Festival from 2013-15. This work is featured in the 2014 ABC documentary Outback Choir and in the 2015 film Wide Open Sky. In 2016, Alice was composer in residence for Sydney Children’s Choir and an associate artist with Barangaroo NSW, creating several new works including a sound installation. Alice has completed honours in Composition with teacher Paul Stanhope at Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she was awarded the 2012 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for academic merit in Composition. Alice is the vocal arranger for Fangirls, a new musical by Yve Blake quickly building hype. Alice music directed showcases at the Women of the World Festival in London, UK and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2018.

Repertoire

Barangaroo and Bennelong *
Eye of the Soundstorm
Millers Point Mob
Nya Wali Banga
The Hungry Mile
The Shakespeare Room
Words for Wine

Ella Macens is one of four female composers who participated in the inaugural National Women Composers’ Development Program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Over the course of the two-year program, Ella worked with The Goldner String Quartet, The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and percussionist Claire Edwardes, as well as a variety of other soloists and ensembles.

Ella has been composer in residence with the Sydney Youth Orchestra and Trinity Grammar School, and has received both national and international commissions for a variety of ensembles. Her portfolio of chamber, orchestral, choral and solo works is performed in both Australia and Europe and her compositional style is heavily influenced by both classical and popular music genres.

As a solo singer-songwriter, Ella composes music in a popular music style for piano, voice and ukulele. She is also a part of a duo with Melbourne-based musician Ivars Štubis, and together they celebrate their shared Latvian background by arranging and performing traditional Latvian folk songs alongside their original acoustic works. Ella composes music for film, television and multimedia, and is currently working on a score for a new game, set to be released in 2017.

Ella writes:

In January 2017, I was fortunate enough to be selected to participate in the Gondwana National Choral School composer program. Over the course of the two-week period, we, the composers, had the invaluable opportunity to work with the Gondwana choristers under the guidance of composer Paul Stanhope, and with … the Song Company under the guidance of their incredible artistic director Antony Pitts.

These were two of the most challenging, inspirational, sleep-deprived, yet motivating weeks of my life, and I still can’t quite comprehend the path my music has taken since my time at Gondwana.

Ella was the 2017-18 SCC Composer in Residence.

A Sydney-based composer and conductor, Paul Stanhope is a leading figure in his generation. He has had prominent performances of his works in the UK, Europe, Asia as well as North and South America. After studies with Peter Sculthorpe, Paul studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London in 2000.

Paul has composed for all combinations of vocal and instrumental forces including a number of major works in recent years for large forces such as Jandamarra: Sing for the Country a dramatic cantata based on the life of the Western Australian indigenous resistance hero, premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra together with Gondwana Choirs and members of the Bunuba nation in 2014.

Paul is a Senior Lecturer in composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, as well as director of Choral Programs. He was Musical Director of the Sydney Chamber Choir from 2006-2015 and is also the Artistic Chair of the Australia Ensemble @UNSW.

Repertoire

Frosty the snowman: an inconvenient truth
Ground Zero
Jandamarra: Sing for the Country (excerpt)
Lament to St. Cecilia
Lost the Plot
The Acrobat
The Flying Dream

Paul Jarman is a composer, performer, conductor and educator. He has written over 200 commissioned works, school and town anthems, and he publishes his music worldwide. Paul works throughout Australia, Europe, Asia, America and the Pacific with choirs, theatre and dance ensembles, and was a member of Australia’s pioneering world music group Sirocco, since 1996. He has performed on a variety of Australian films and composed the music for award-winning adventure films including ‘Ocean to Sky’, about Sir Edmund Hillary.

Paul has composed music for the Rugby World Cup, Australia Day, Q150 Songbridge, the Centenary of Federations, and he was the only composer in the Southern Hemisphere commissioned by Oxford University Press for the 400th Anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, 2016. Paul’s piece for the 40th Anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr in 2008 was performed for President Barack Obama in the White House.

Repertoire

Ancient City
Australia Day Suite
Heritage in Song
Icarus
The Will to Climb
Towards Infinity
Turn on the open sea
(includes Shackleton, Sea of Berries,
Volta do ma Largo)

Luke Byrne is a Sydney-based composer, musical director and pianist. Recent commissions include Earthrise, Capricorn and Desert Sea for Sydney Philharmonia, Storm Bird, Buruwan Elegy and Birinyi for Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Where Sails Once Flewfor Adelaide Chamber Singers. Luke arranged the national anthems for the 2015 Netball World Cup and in 2012 was composer-in-residence for Sydney Children’s Choir.

In 2018, Luke’s musical Between the Sea and Sky was selected for the New York Musical Festival where it won awards including Best Musical and Outstanding Music.

Luke is also a musical director in theatre, his credits include The Harp in the South, Muriel’s Wedding and Chimerica (Sydney Theatre Company), The Events for Sydney Festival/Belvoir/Malthouse, Hamlet (Belvoir), The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (Belvoir/Sydney Festival), Big Fish (Hayes Theatre), and The World’s Wife (Melbourne Theatre Company).

Repertoire

Acknowledgement of Country
Birinyi
Buruwan Elegy
Desert Sea
Kites
Storm Bird
Travelling Companion
The Number One Train
Vision of the Future
Wise Men Three