Stuart Greenbaum
Stuart Greenbaum’s sound has overt connections to jazz, pop and minimalism, yet is equally grounded in the Western art music tradition, across a large body of orchestral, chamber, choral and stage works.
Having studied composition with Broadstock and Conyngham at the University of Melbourne, Stuart Greenbaum is Professor of Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (Head of Composition, 2007–2023). He is the author of over 200 works, including 19 sonatas, five piano trios, seven string quartets, five concertos, four symphonies and two operas.
His music appears on some 40 commercially released CDs, among them eight releases devoted solely to his output (The Final Hour, The Thin Blue Line, Return Journey, Satellite Mapping (MD 3402), Mondrian Interiors, 800 Million Heartbeats, Mercurial and Music for Theatre). Prizes include the Dorian Le Galliene Award, the Heinz Harant Prize and the Albert Maggs Award. 90 Minutes Circling the Earth won Orchestral Work of the Year at the 2008 Classical Music Awards.
Nelson, a three-act opera with libretto by Ross Baglin, was presented in London in 2005 and premiered in full at the 2007 Castlemaine State Festival. Their second opera, The Parrot Factory, received a five-show season in 2010 from Victorian Opera at The Malthouse. Major choral works include The Foundling, commissioned by Cantori New York in 1997, and From the Beginning, commissioned for the sesquicentenary of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic in 2003. Orchestral scores include works for the SSO, TSO and AYO, and Symphony No. 2 (Double Planet), commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Major chamber works have been written for The Australia Ensemble, Southern Cross Soloists, Ensemble Liaison and Sydney Omega Ensemble.
He was Featured Composer at the 2006 Aurora Festival, resident composer at the 2009 Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and Composer in Focus at the 2009 Bangalow Music Festival. In 2009 he was Australia’s representative for the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange, working in Auckland with NZTrio on a new piano trio, The Year Without a Summer, which toured nationally for Chamber Music New Zealand, appeared in Sydney for the ISCM World New Music Days (2010) and was heard internationally at the City of London Festival (2011).
Stuart Greenbaum is featured on the following titles
Bushfire Dreams
Four marvellous works by Melbourne composers appear here in superb performances by the Ormond Quartet, resident at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music between 2016 and 2018. Lotte Betts-Dean joins them for Katy Abbott’s work.
Compositions by Stuart Greenbaum also appear on
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.
Inspirations
They say there is nothing new under the sun. New works of art challenge this notion. In this piano recording by Ian Holtham, all the works, commissioned from his Melbourne composer colleagues, are responses to major works in the piano literature. Something new has arisen, phoenix-like, out of something old.
One
Claire Edwardes is one of Australia’s most charismatic performers, and this is her third solo CD for Tall Poppies. Her first (Coil, TP193) gathered important Australian works; her second (Flash, TP215) mixed children’s-piano miniatures with new commissions and won the 2012 Art Music Award for Excellence.
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.
The Metallic Violins
This CD is crammed with world premiere performances and scintillating playing. These two violinists inspired wonderful new works by Australian composers, yielding the first recording of Australian music for two violins, from Hindson’s raunchy title piece to Finsterer’s dreamy Spherica I.
Credit: Liner Notes
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.