Lazar "Larry" Sitsky is an Australian composer, pianist, and music educator and scholar. His long term legacy is still to be assessed, but through his work to date he has made a significant contribution to the Australian music tradition.
Carl Edward Vine, is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
William Lovelock was an English classical composer and pedagogue who spent many years in Australia. He was the first Director of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane, and later became the chief music critic for The Courier-Mail newspaper while developing an independent career as a composer.
The University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music offers students an integrated music education based on best international contemporary arts practice.
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
The UWA Conservatorium of Music is a teaching and research school offering undergraduate and postgraduate study in music at the University of Western Australia. It is located at the north-east corner of the Crawley campus and teaches predominately Classical music, with focus in the undergraduate curriculum on performance, as well as overall strength in musicology, composition and electronic music. In 2016, UWA entered the top 100 "Performing Arts" institutions in the world, and in 2017 and 2018 the School improved its ranking to enter the top 50 in the world, according to the QS World University Rankings. The Conservatorium is also well regarded in research. Under the research code "19 Studies in Creative Arts and Writing", the Conservatorium was rated as "4 - Above World Standard" by the Australian Research Council in 2018. Previously, the name of the organisation has been the UWA Department of Music, and the UWA School of Music.
Phillip Maurice Treloar is an Australian jazz drummer, percussionist and composer. In an extensive career devoted to creative pursuit Treloar has addressed himself to the problems of relationship found at the intersection of notated music-composition and improvisation. In 1987 Treloar coined the term, Collective Autonomy, to signify his endeavor in this field of work. Fundamental in this has been composition- and performance-development projects, with these at times involving electronic media. Collaborations have, and continue to be, crucial.
David Pereira is an Australian classical cellist, considered one of the finest working today. He was Senior Lecturer in Cello at the Canberra School of Music from 1990 to 2008. Later he worked there as a Distinguished Artist in Residence. Since April 2017 he again teaches cello there as a Senior Lecturer.
Richard Elliot Haynes is an Australian clarinettist residing in Switzerland. He performs music spanning the 16th to 21st centuries worldwide, but predominantly music by living composers, in a multitude of contexts.
Katia Tiutiunnik is an Australian composer, scholar and violist. She is of Russian, Ukrainian and Irish descent.
Helen Margaret Gifford OAM is an Australian composer. On Australia Day 1996 she was appointed to the Medal of the Order of Australia, "in recognition of service to music as a composer". At the APRA Music Awards of 2016 she won the category "Distinguished Services to Australian 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.
The earliest western musical influences in Australia can be traced to two distinct sources: in the first settlements, the large body of convicts, soldiers and sailors who brought the traditional folk music of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland; and the first free settlers, some of whom had been exposed to the European classical music tradition in their upbringing. An example of original music by a convict would be an 1861 tune dedicated to settler James Gordon by fiddler constable Alexander Laing. Very little music has survived from this early period, although there are samples of music originating from Sydney and Hobart that date back to the early 19th century. Musical publications from this period preserved in Australian libraries include works by Charles Edward Horsley, William Stanley, Isaac Nathan, Charles Sandys Packer, Frederick Augustus Packer, Carl Linger, Francis Hartwell Henslowe, Frederick Ellard, Raimund Pechotsch and Julius Siede.
Flederman was an Australian contemporary music ensemble co-founded by Carl Vine and Simone de Haan in 1978. Both were teaching at Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Brisbane. It later became an ensemble with a fluctuating line-up and up to six members at a time. They released their debut album, Australian Music, in 1984. In 1988 Flederman issued their self-titled second album, which won the ARIA Award for Best Classical Album was nominated for Best Independent Release in 1989.
Edward Primrose is an Australian composer, writer, and musical dramaturge. He has conducted opera and orchestral recordings.
Katy Abbott is an Australian composer. Abbott writes music for orchestra, chamber ensemble and voice. Her work reflects her interests in contemporary Australian cultures and often explores notions of home, place, humour and connection.
Stuart Greenbaum is an Australian composer and professor of music composition at the University of Melbourne. He is currently the Head of Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
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.
Christopher Sainsbury is an Indigenous Australian composer, performer and teacher of music. As of 2022 he is an associate professor at the ANU School of Music, Canberra, where he lectures in composition, songwriting, and contemporary Australian Indigenous music. He is the founder and artistic director of the Ngarra-Burria: First Peoples Composers program.
