B
- Alison Bauld (born 1944) [2]
- Betty Beath (born 1932) [3]
- Una Mabel Bourne (1882–1974) [4]
- Anne Boyd (born 1946) [5]
- May Brahe (née Mary Dickson 1884–1956) [6]
- Amanda Brown (born 1965) [7] [8]
- Vera Buck (1903–1986) [9]
This is a list of Australian women composers of classical music, contemporary music and/or film soundtracks.
Anne Elizabeth Boyd AM is an Australian composer and emeritus professor of music at the University of Sydney.
Hornsby Girls' High School is a government-funded single-sex academically selective secondary day school for girls, located in Hornsby, a suburb on the Upper North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1930, the school's first principal was the scientist Sarah Agnes Angus Brewster.
The APRA Music Awards in Australia are annual awards to celebrate excellence in contemporary music, which honour the skills of member composers, songwriters, and publishers who have achieved outstanding success in sales and airplay performance.
Ann Kirsten Carr-Boyd is an Australian classical composer and musicologist. She is considered an authority on the history of European music in Australia.
Zana Clarke is an Australian composer. She studied recorder with Ruth Wilkinson and Hans Dieter Michatz and violin with Anne Martoni and Marco Van Pagge, and began to play in youth orchestras at age 12. She graduated from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Arts in Latin and Classics and a Bachelor of Arts in Music.
Rites of Passage is a music theatre work written by the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe in 1972–73. It is often categorised as an opera, but it does not conform to the traditional concept of opera. It is written for dancers depicting the ritual of initiation of the Aranda people, an indigenous tribe; double SATB chorus singing words from Boethius and others; three percussionists, two tubas, piano (echoed), six cellos and four double basses; but no parts for individual singers. Sculthorpe drew on the approach espoused by Jean-Baptiste Lully, in which dance, drama and music are not separated.
This is a list of Australian musical composers.
Toby Wren is an Australian jazz composer and performer. He performs in the Toby Wren Trio/Quartet, the Carnatic Jazz Experiment, which incorporates Indian music. He led the sextet Finders Keepers.
Leah Curtis is a Los Angeles-based Australian musician and composer. She is best known for her work as composer and orchestrator for film, as well as in contemporary classical composition.
Judith Mary Bailey is a New Zealand-born pianist, jazz musician and composer who has lived in Australia since 1960.
Genevieve Lacey is an Australian musician and recorder virtuoso, working as a performer, creator, curator and cultural leader. The practice of listening is central to her works, which are created collaboratively with artists from around the world. Lacey plays handmade recorders made by Joanne Saunders and Fred Morgan. In her collection, she also has instruments by David Coomber, Monika Musch, Michael Grinter, Paul Whinray and Herbert Paetzold.
Lyle Chan is an Australian composer, known for his unique approach of writing cumulative works with only one work per genre. His AIDS Memoir Quartet chronicles his years as an HIV/AIDS activist at the height of the epidemic in Australia. John Cage was a major influence on his work, and he is regarded as an authority on the musician.
Simone De Haan is an Australian trombonist.
Stephen Moreno was an Australian classical music composer. He was born in Spain. where he became a novice monk in the Benedictine order. He was ordained in New Norcia, Western Australia. He was a prolific and respected artist.
Frederick Augustus Packer (1839–1902) was an Australian composer of Anglican spiritual and romantic music. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, of a musical family. His parents, Frederick Alexander Packer and Augusta Packer, both members of the Royal Academy of Music in London, arrived with their family in Hobart in 1852 to take up the position of organist at St David's Cathedral in Davey Street. He worked as a postal telegraph operator, parliamentary civil servant, organist and music teacher, notably of Amy Sherwin. He died after some years in Sydney He was a nephew of composer Charles Sandys Packer and an uncle to media mogul R. C. Packer.
Marc Hannaford is an Australian jazz pianist. He was nominated for the ARIA Award for Best Jazz Album at the ARIA Music Awards of 2011 and at the AIR Awards of 2011 for Shreveport Stomp in 2011.
Mark Isaacs is an Australian classical and jazz composer and pianist.
Annie May Constance Summerbelle was an Australian composer of light classical and popular music. She was the third daughter of Captain William and Honoriah Summerbelle of Double Bay. Her sister, Stella Clare, married Francis Joseph Bayldon, a master mariner and nautical instructor. From the late 1880s she was a student of Alice Charbonnet-Kellermann, with Summerbelle's earliest compositions appearing in the early 1890s.
Claire Olivia Edwardes is an Australian classical percussionist, artistic director, composer and advocate for change in the classical music sector. Edwardes is the co-founder and artistic director of Ensemble Offspring, roles she shared with composer Damien Ricketson until his retirement from the group in 2015. In 2016, she won two APRA Art Music Awards, with one going to Ensemble Offspring for "sustained services to Australian music for 20 years", and Edwardes receiving an individual award "for performance, advocacy and artistic leadership”. She is the only Australian to have won the Luminary Art Music Award for an Individual 3 times. In 2019, Edwardes created and performed the music and dance theatre work RECITAL with dancer Richard Cilli and director Gideon Obarzanek for Dance Massive 2019. Edwardes composed the music and sound design for RECITAL in collaboration with Paul Mac. In 2011 and 2017, Edwardes was a member of the Australian World Orchestra. In 2015-216, Edwardes was the Vice President of the New Music Network. Edwardes has appeared on television as an occasional host of Play School, and as a panelist on Spicks and Specks. In 2021, Edwardes created The Australian Marimba Composition Kit and a comprehensive list of percussion works by female composers. Additionally, Edwardes has composed numerous works for solo waterphone. She is currently on staff as a percussion teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.