Gerard Brophy
Gerard Brophy is a contemporary Australian composer whose colourful, rhythmically alert scores range from solo miniatures to orchestral works and have been heard widely at home and abroad.
Gerard Brophy began his music studies in classical guitar. He studied composition with Don Banks, Anthony Gilbert and Richard Toop at the NSW Conservatorium of Music, graduating as Student of the Year in 1982. He has won numerous composition prizes in Australia and overseas, and his works were selected for the 1981, 1984, 1986 and 1991 ISCM World Music Days.
He has held an Australia Council Composer Fellowship, an Italian government scholarship, and scholarships from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena and the Paris Conservatoire. Leading ensembles have commissioned and performed his music, among them the St Louis, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the Nash Ensemble, Het Nieuw Ensemble, Gruppo Musica d’Oggi, Het Trio, Chicago Pro Musica, Ensemble Octandre and Ensemble l’Itinéraire. His work is regularly broadcast in Europe, Japan, the United States and Australia.
In late 1983 he became the inaugural Composer-in-Residence at Musica Viva Australia. Further residencies followed with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Queensland Conservatorium and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.
Compositions by Gerard Brophy appear on
Flash: Marimba Miniatures
Flash is Claire Edwardes’s second Tall Poppies recording: a warm programme of marimba miniatures drawn from her pianist beginnings and life with two young daughters, pairing new Australian works with transcribed children’s piano gems on the five-octave marimba.
Coil: Australian Music for Solo Percussion
Claire Edwardes had already marked the Australian contemporary music scene after the ABC Young Performer of the Year award in 1999 and the Freedman Fellowship in 2005. Back from European study and performance, she was active in new-music ensembles and building a solo career.
Still Life: Australian Music for Viola
This is the third solo viola disc on Tall Poppies, and one of the few such albums ever issued in Australia. Patricia Pollett is widely regarded as among the country’s finest musicians, and the violist who has done most to draw new works for the instrument.
Viva Sax!
Margery Smith is a Sydney-based saxophonist whose virtuosity meets the full range of this Australian programme, from mid-century sonatas to later works that lean into jazz, improvisation and ensemble colour.
Stroke
A striking programme of contemporary Australian piano music, superbly played by New York–based Australian pianist Lisa Moore. Smetanin's formidable title work, among the most demanding in the repertoire, was captured here in a single take.