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Mark Walton (born 1957) [1] is a New Zealand clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and musical educator.
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Mark Walton (born 1957) [1] is a New Zealand clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and musical educator.
Walton was born in Christchurch, growing up in a household with no car, no television nor phone for a time. His early education was at Linwood North School before later attending the Christchurch School of Music. Walton continued clarinet studies in New York and London from 1975 to 1984, and, after a brief spell back in New Zealand, he left for Sydney, Australia, in 1985. [2]
Walton was Chair of Woodwind at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for several years before being appointed Chair of Performance, Outreach and Communications there, posts he held for nearly 20 years until 2006. [2]
By 2009, Walton was doing double duty between being the Musical Director of the Christchurch School of Music in New Zealand, and continuing to hold events and workshops for woodwind musicians across Australia.
In January 2012, he taught at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music Winter Academy in Kabul. [2]
Walton has established a groundbreaking instrumental music teaching system using video conferencing for young musicians in remote areas of Australia and has set up music programmes in many country areas.
Walton has written, compiled or edited for several different publishers over 200 publications, [3] many of which have become standard woodwind teaching repertoire. Recently Mark has devoted considerable time to the composition of children oriented musical productions, such as Bobby The Musical and Leonard and the Lottery Ticket. He has also recorded numerous solo albums, the most recent being High Spirits 2, a CD of his own compositions.
In recognition of his work in improving accessibility to music training for remote communities, Walton was awarded the Order of Australia medal in 2005. [2] In January 2021 he returned the OAM because he objected to another award recipient being honoured.
Neil Mullane Finn is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and musician. He is best known for being a principal member of Split Enz with his brother Tim, the lead singer and a founding member of Crowded House, and a touring member of Fleetwood Mac. Finn joined Split Enz in 1977 after the departure of founding member Phil Judd and influenced a shift away from band's art rock roots and towards a new wave and pop-oriented sound. Gradually rising in creative prominence within the band, he came to write the majority of the band's successful songs in the 1980s, including "One Step Ahead", "History Never Repeats", "I Got You", and "Message to My Girl".
The Sydney Conservatorium of Music is a heritage-listed music school in Macquarie Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious music schools in Australia. Located adjacent to the Royal Botanic Gardens on the eastern fringe of the Sydney central business district, the conservatorium is a faculty of the University of Sydney, and incorporates the community-based Conservatorium Open Academy and the Conservatorium High School. In addition to its secondary, undergraduate, post-graduate and community education teaching and learning functions, the conservatorium undertakes research in various fields of music. The building was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 14 January 2011.
The Suzuki method is a music curriculum and teaching philosophy dating from the mid-20th century, created by Japanese violinist and pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki (1898–1998). The method aims to create an environment for learning music which parallels the linguistic environment of acquiring a native language. Suzuki believed that this environment would also help to foster good moral character.
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. was an American jazz composer, conductor, and musician from Indianapolis, as well as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Baker is best known as an educator and founder of the jazz studies program. From 1991 to 2012, he was conductor and musical and artistic director for the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit.
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RNZ Concert is a publicly funded non-commercial New Zealand FM fine music radio network. Radio New Zealand owns the network and operates it from its Wellington headquarters. The network's playlist of classical, jazz, contemporary, and world music includes recordings by local musicians and composers. Around 15 percent of its airtime features live concerts, orchestral performances, operas, interviews, features, and specialty music programs, many of them recorded locally.
Edgar Leslie Bainton was a British-born, latterly Australian-resident composer. He is remembered today mainly for his liturgical anthem And I saw a new heaven, a popular work in the repertoire of Anglican church music, but during recent years Bainton's other musical works, neglected for decades, have been increasingly often heard on CD.
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Mark Bin Bakar is an Indigenous Australian musician, comedian and radio announcer, writer, director/producer as well as an indigenous rights campaigner based in Broome, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. He is best known for his radio and television character, the acid-tongued Mary Geddarrdyu or Mary G, who has gained a national cult following and has been described as a Dame Edna Everage in thongs. In character Mary G has hosted a radio program and hosted a variety show broadcast nationally on SBS Television.
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Anthony Damian Ritchie is a New Zealand composer and academic. He has been a freelance composer accepting commissions for works and in 2018 he became professor of composition at The University of Otago after 18 years of teaching composition. Since 2020 he has been head of Otago's School of Performing Arts, a three-year position. His works number over two hundred, and include symphonies, operas, concertos, choral works, chamber music and solo works.
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Ernest Victor Llewellyn CBE was an Australian violinist, concertmaster, violist, conductor and musical administrator. He was the founding director of the Canberra School of Music and is commemorated by Llewellyn Hall, the concert venue at the School.
Max Olding AM and Pamela Page were a distinguished Australian husband and wife team of duo-pianists. They performed separately in recitals and as concerto soloists, chamber music performers and accompanists both nationally and internationally, but were best known as a piano duo.
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