Ross Edwards
One of Australia's best known and most performed composers, Ross Edwards lives and works in Sydney. His commitment to music as a positive and regenerative force has led him to explore beyond the confines of Western art music.
Edwards' distinctive sound-world interfuses shapes and patterns from nature with musical resources that reflect and celebrate Australia's cultural diversity. In his Maninya (dance-chant) pieces he has pursued an ideal of wholeness – a reintegration of mind, body and spirit, and a restoration to serious music of lightness, spontaneity and the impulse to dance. These works have attracted choreography, notably Stanton Welch's ballet Maninyas – based on the violin concerto of the same name – for the San Francisco Ballet and the Singapore Dance Company, and Chrissie Parrott's interpretation for the West Australian Ballet.
He is perhaps best known for his orchestral music. Works include Enyato III (1995) for the Sydney Symphony's European tour, the Concerto for Guitar and Strings (1995) for John Williams and the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, Symphony No. 2 – Earth Spirit Songs (1997) for Yvonne Kenny and the Sydney Symphony, White Ghost Dancing (1999) for David Porcelijn and the Tasmanian Symphony, and Symphony No. 3 – Mater Magna (2000) for the Melbourne Symphony. The ABC Classics recording of Symphony No. 1 – Da Pacem Domine (1991) with the Sydney Symphony won an ARIA Award in Australia and was Editor's Choice at the 1996 Cannes Classical Awards.
His music also accompanies dance and film, including the original score for Bruce Beresford's feature Paradise Road. Dawn Mantras was telecast at the dawn of the new millennium from the sails of the Sydney Opera House to worldwide acclaim.
Edwards has created a sound world aligned with deep ecology, seeking to reconnect music with elemental forces and restore its traditional association with ritual and dance. Universal in its concern with age-old mysteries, the music is deeply rooted in Australia: it celebrates cultural diversity and draws inspiration from the natural environment, especially birdsong and the patterns and drones of insects. Living and working on the Pacific Rim, he is conscious of the potential of that vast region.
He has composed prolifically across most genres. Some concert works allow for lighting, movement and costume, among them the Fourth Symphony Star Chant and Frog and Star Cycle, a concerto for Amy Dickson, Colin Currie and the Sydney Symphony. Later works include Dances of Life and Death for the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony, Singing the Love for The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and Vespers for Mother Earth for the Judith Neilson Institute.
Ross Edwards is featured on the following titles
The Sonata Project
Bernadette Harvey performs four large-scale solo piano works: Aristea Mellos’s three-movement Sonata, Melody Eötvös’s two-movement Piano Sonata No. 1, Jane Stanley’s Piano Sonata framed by Prelude and Postlude, and Ross Edwards’s Sea Star Fantasy.
Mantras and Night Flowers
One can be sure that Australian music might be finally coming of age when one record label can contemplate a third recording of a recent piano work – Carl Vine's magnificent Piano Sonata No. 1 is now released for the third time by Tall Poppies.
Alternating Currents
Bernadette Harvey’s debut solo CD on Tall Poppies presents one of Australia’s finest pianists: scarily accurate technique, a fearless ear for nuance, and a gift for making a composer’s intentions clear at first hearing.
Musica Viva: 60th Anniversary, Selected Commissions 1975–2004
This disc marks sixty years of Musica Viva Australia’s work commissioning Australian chamber music. Since 1945 the organisation had helped bring nearly a hundred new works into being, building a distinctive national repertoire. A full list of those commissions is included with the CD.
Raft Song at Sunrise: Chamber Music, Vol. 2
Following the best-selling first volume of Ross Edwards’s chamber music (TP051), this disc gathers some of his most enduring works, recorded here for the first time.
Credit: Liner Notes
Ecstatic Dances: Chamber Music, Vol. 1
One of Tall Poppies' most successful releases, this collection of Ross Edwards's chamber music sets his meditative sacred style beside the buoyant energy of his Maninya pieces.
Producer: Producer
Compositions by Ross Edwards also appear on
Mass of the Dreaming
It is remarkable that 2016 brought the first recording by an Australian choir devoted entirely to Australian sacred choral music. This disc fills that long gap with newly commissioned and recent works.
Kingfisher
This CD is the result of a daring project to commission 21 composers to write new works for Halcyon's two singers, Jenny Duck-Chong and Alison Morgan. Presented over two concerts in their 15th anniversary year, and then recorded at Trackdown.
The Emerald Leopard
Josie and the Emeralds pair acclaimed early-music soprano Josie Ryan with some of Australia’s finest viol players, the Emerald City Viols. Founded in 2011, the group is known for sophisticated performances and inventive programmes of Renaissance and contemporary works, including compositions and arrangements by director Brooke Green.
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.
Bolmimerie: SHE
SHE is the only harp septet in the world, and this is its first recording.
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.
Woman's Song: Australian Settings of Poetry by Judith Wright
Elizabeth Campbell has long been a tireless promoter of Australian art song. With Tony Fogg in the 1980s she presented the recital series From Nathan To Now; two decades later she brought that energy to a recording of settings of poetry by Judith Wright.
Mirrors of Fire
Every now and then a CD comes along that makes you glad to be alive: the music is so infectious and the performances brilliant. This is one such disc, featuring Timothy Kain, Australia’s virtuoso guitarist.
Lift Off: Australian Piano Music for Children
An engaging collection of piano music by Australian composers written to spark young imaginations. Elpis Liossatos, an Australian pianist then living in Greece, brings charm and enthusiasm to these performances.
Red Earth
A world-premiere recording of important Australian works for instrumental ensemble. Performers and repertoire were hand-selected for the project, which was funded by the Australia Council.
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.
Viola Power
It's hard to imagine a CD of Australian music for the viola, but here it is. From Grainger's chirpy love song through Ross Edwards' intricate dance to Peter Sculthorpe's masterful work with percussion.
Uluru: New Solo Cello Works for David Pereira
Twelve new Australian solo cello works written for David Pereira, celebrating the handing back of Uluru to its traditional Indigenous owners. Responses range from didgeridoo-like sonorities in Hopkins to the modernism of Dean.
Cello Dreaming
Pereira has inspired more new works for his instrument than any other Australian musician. This is his first solo CD of works mostly written for him, and the first of three such discs then planned. His performances are powerful and persuasive.
Spinning: New Australian Flute Music
Geoffrey Collins has single-handedly shaped the Australian flute repertoire, and this is his third solo recording. Five of these works were written for him, and they show how freely composers respond to his playing.
The Green CD
In a climate of rising concern for the planet, this programme of Australian choral works turns on nature and protest. Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? stands as a landmark of Australian choral writing, and one of its most popular.
Voices
Composer–pianist Roger Smalley presents a personal recital of lean, often quiet Australian piano works from the 1960s and 1970s, many appearing on CD here for the first time.
Points of Departure
Perihelion, the Brisbane chamber group of clarinet, viola, piano and cello, built its repertoire largely through commissions. This disc gathers some of the ensemble’s most successful new Australian works.
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.
Synergy With Samuels
This CD grew from a concert collaboration between Australia’s best-known percussion quartet and America’s finest vibraphonist, Dave Samuels. Together they cook up a storm.
Christmas under Capricorn
The Australian Youth Orchestra, conducted by Graham Abbott, plays nineteen Christmas carols arranged for orchestra by Australian composers. Two carols appear in paired settings, inviting comparison. Listenable festive music, easy to give as a gift.
Songs of Sea and Sky
Nigel Westlake and David Bollard present Australian music for clarinet and piano by Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, Mark Isaacs, Miriam Hyde, Margaret Sutherland and Don Banks.