Composers
His Tuba Concerto and Piccolo Concerto have been performed and recorded in Australia and overseas.
In 1983 he was commissioned to compose his first major brass band work Ash Wednesday. This work was selected as the A-grade test piece for the National Band Championships in 1985 and 1988. Since then nine compositions have been selected or commissioned as test pieces for the Nationals.
McKimm awards: The Dorian Le Gallienne Award (1978), The Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Victoria Award (1984), the inaugural ANA Composition Award (1985), AMC Award for Most Distinguished Contribution to the Presentation of Australian Music in Victoria (1988)
He retired from the MSO in 1997, and in 1998 was appointed Music Director for the Eltham Concert Band (ECB), a position he held until 2005. During this period he composed, orchestrated and arranged a large body of works (over 200) for community music groups; concert band, soloists and choirs. In 2006 McKimm produced Trombone Solo (unaccompanied), Along A River and O Yellow Yellow Sweet for chamber orchestra and girls choir on the poems of John Shaw Neilson, Trombone Concerto, Double Flute Concerto and four Piano Sonatas.
McKimm is an eclectic composer. He composes for specific projects, composer in residence commissions or requests. His work covers a diverse range e.g. for students of all levels from primary school to tertiary; for non-professional community ensembles to high level professional orchestras and chamber groups; concertos for "Cinderella" solo instruments such as tuba, piccolo, viola, bass clarinet, euphonium, trombone, trumpet.
An unhurried yet ongoing process of evolution over 30 years has resulted in a style characterised by the exploration of intense textures, simple structures and melodic fragments. In his lyrical vocal works the textures tend to be less dense and the fragments more extended. Holley’s interest in orchestration was fostered through his role of conductor of more than 300 concerts of the standard orchestral, chamber and contemporary repertoire with Northern Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Bach Orchestra and The Gallery Players. Regularly performed and broadcast in Australia since the mid-1970s, and now grounded firmly in Western tonality and impressionism, much of Holley’s music is influenced by the Australian landscape and ‘soundscape’, especially by his love of birds and their songs.
Compositions include the opera Dorothea (1988) and four song cycles, all written in conjunction with the librettist Jyoti Brunsdon, and numerous works for chamber orchestra, small groups and solo instruments. In recent years compositions include Chamber Symphony (2003) and The Winged Viola (2004) for solo viola and ensemble, together with the trumpet concerto Doppler’s Web (2005) and A Line of Stars (2007), both works commissioned and performed in the Concert Hall of the Opera House by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, with Paul Goodchild the soloist in Doppler’s Web. His Opal Tide (2006) was composed by request of the Sydney Symphony Brass Section, and premiered during their 2006 tour of New South Wales. Holley also teaches trumpet and composition. His flute and trumpet works are included in the Australian Music Examinations Board syllabus, and in 1995 EMI Australia published two collections: Summer Bird and other pieces for trumpet and Birds of Opal and other pieces for flute. CDs of chamber and vocal music include Ophelia and Masquerade on the MBS label.
He has won numerous prizes for composition including First Prize in the 1981 Townsville Pacific Festival's National Composition Competition for his orchestral work Festive Overture; the Albert Maggs Award; two APRA Music Awards for his orchestral works The Mountain and Toward The Shining Light; First Prize in the Hambacher Preis International Composers' Competition, West Germany for his Tuba Concerto; and in 1994 he received the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Award, Australia's richest composition prize, for Bright Tracks for mezzo soprano and string trio. His orchestral work Stars In A Dark Night (Symphony #2) received four 'Sounds Australian' National Music Critics' Awards including 'Best Australian Orchestral Work in 1989' and was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's entry to the prestigious Paris Rostrum of Composers in 1990. In 2001 he received the Australian Music Centre’s Victorian Award for Best Composition – Dark Side Symphony #5, and in 2002 his Federation Flourish was nominated for an APRA/AMC “orchestral Work of the Year”.
His music has been performed and broadcast internationally and recorded on over 45 CDs and at many international festivals including The Stroud Festival, England; the 11th Berlin Biennale; the Festtage fur Musik in East Berlin; Darmstadt Summer School, West Germany; the Music Today Festival, Tokyo; the Hong Kong and Oslo World Music Days; Asian Music Festivals in Japan and Korea; Musica Nova Festival in Munich; the BBC Proms; the European Brass Band Championships in Birmingham; and in Australia at the Adelaide Festival, Musica Nova Festival, Brisbane; Summer Music, Moomba and Spoleto Festivals in Melbourne and the Townsville Pacific Festival. There have also been performances in England, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Spain and China.
He has had performances by all of the major orchestras in Australia - the Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Tasmanian and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Youth Orchestra - and by the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra in Japan, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra in Munich, the Pacific Ocean Orchestra and the Krasnoyarsk Orchestra in Russia, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Moldova, the Ulster Orchestra, and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland.
Brenton has also written several major brass band works; he was commissioned to write Winds of Change, which was premiered at the 2000 European Brass Band Championships in Birmingham by the Yorkshire Building Society Brass Band, conducted by David King, and broadcast, on BBC Radio. This work was the A Grade Test Piece at the 2002 Australian Brass Band Championships held in Geelong. Brenton’s 30 minute work Gates of Day was premiered as the final work in the 2001 Melbourne Festival. Scored for 100 brass players (4 brass bands), military band and 400 bellringers playing 2001 bells it was played at the outdoor Sidney Myer Music.
In 1988-89 he was the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Inaugural Composer In Residence and in 1997 he received the Jean Bogan Prize for his solo piano work Dying of the Light and in 1998 he received the Michelle Morrow Memorial Award for Composition and an Explorations Opera Project grant. In 1998 he spent three months in Italy on fellowships awarded by the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and a Bellagio Award from the Rockefeller Foundation. In November 2005 he returned to Italy as a fellow at the Ligurian Study Center in Italy.
In 1999 he received the prestigious Don Banks Award from the Australia Council, for his contribution to Australian Music, which enabled him to compose for most of that year, including visits to the USA (Visiting Professor of Composition at Indiana University), England and Russia. His five symphonies were recorded by the Krasnoyarsk Symphony Orchestra (Russia) conducted by Andrew Wheeler and released on the Etcetera label in 2000 and received excellent reviews in England and Australia.
In 2004 his solo piano work Torre di Forza was the test piece at the Sydney International Piano Competition, and in 2005 ABC Classics released a CD of orchestral works performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ola Rudner. His chamber opera based on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was performed in Bonn, Germany in April 2006. His music is available on over 40 commercial CDs worldwide.
Brenton had written 5 symphonies, concertos for tuba, piano and saxophone, several orchestral works, a chamber opera, 4 string quartets and much chamber, choral and solo music.
From 1982 -2006 he was employed in the Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne as Professor of Music and Head of Composition. In 2007 he has been appointed as Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
In 2008 his music was performed at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games and in 2009 he is Composer in Residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, composing a concerto for trumpeter James Morrison, a chamber concertino for trombonist Brett Kelly and a large work for soloists, choir and orchestra premiered at the 2009 Melbourne International Festival of the Arts.
For further information: www.brentonbroadstock.com.
Michiel has worked as a Higher School Certificate music composition examiner, and represented northern rural N.SW. at the 1985 Asian Composers Conference. In 1986 he undertook a short course of study in traditional Chinese instrumental performance at the Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing - The Peoples Republic of China), and on his return to Australia his a Capella composition The Jade Flute was awarded first prize in the 1988 Intervarsity Choral Composition Competition.
Michiel Irik's music has been performed in Australia by The Magpie Musicians, Windbags, duo pianists Nigel Butterly & Deborah Priest, the Sydney Mandolins, Austraysis, the Sydney Guitar Trio, trombonist Gregory van der Struik, the Ku-Ring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra and the Armidale Symphony Orchestra. His music has been recorded and broadcast on ABC-FM, 2MBS-FM and 2ARM-FM, and more recently in Belgium and the Netherlands by Duo Contemporian, the Selmer Saxophone Quartet and the bass clarinetist Henri Bok.
From 1990 - 1993 Michiel Irik was guest conductor with the Armidale Symphony Orchestra, and from 1993 - 1997 was also Vice-President of the Fellowship of Australian Composers.
He began playing cornet in the Hyde Street Band at the age of 8, later studying trumpet with Mervyn Simpson at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Music in 1977. Robert was a member of the MSO from 1976 to 1990 he then moved to pursue teaching and writing, initially at Haileybury College and finally the VCA.
He has had a wealth of experience playing in all genres from orchestral to big bands, films, commercials and chamber ensembles recently working with Orchestra Victoria and The Australian Pops Orchestra. His music has been reordered many times with the latest being his 2005 work Chilago which is included on the album Journey, contemporary music for trumpet and organ recorded by Anthony Pope and Dominic Perissinotto. His Four Pieces for Brass Trio, Australian Folk Song Suite and Fanfare both for brass quintet are also published by Kookaburra Music.
Robert's Tuba Folk and Lachlan Tiger are in the AMEB brass syllabus and included in their brass publications.
His compositions have been performed, broadcast and recorded on CD in Australia and overseas. In 1998 his first Concerto for Trombone was performed by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra with distinguished soloist Gregory van der Struik. Performances of some of his other works were also given at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The première of his Second Concerto for Trombone was given in 2002 by international virtuoso Jacques Mauger, Professor of Trombone at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris, with subsequent performances in France in 2003 and in Australia in 2004 by Gregory van der Struik.
His Welzheim Flourish for trombone and organ was commissioned by and premiered at the Lutheran Church in Welzheim, Germany in 1998. The compact disc Harlequinade, released in 2002, features leading Sydney brass players and associate artists in performances of his music. Several of his compositions have been selected for NSW State Solo Championships and National Concert Band Solo events while Alea Iacta Est (The Die is Cast) was chosen as the A Grade test piece for the 2007 NSW State Band Championships and for the Division d’Honneur of the 2009 French National Band Championships for which he was a member of the jury.
He has taught in government and private schools and is regularly called upon to adjudicate at Eisteddfodau and State and Metropolitan Band Competitions.
As a soloist, Greg has released and been featured on a number of CDs which emanate from the Trombonis Australis Project, initiated in 1990 to develop and present an Australian contribution to international brass repertoire. He has performed in Australia, Europe and Asia as a recitalist and with ensembles such as the Orchestre de Picardie, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Royal Australian Air Force Air Command Band, Orchestre de Cuivres d'Amiens, Orchestre à Vent de Doullens, Le Brass Band Nord Pas de Calais, Gouds Symfonie Orkest, University of Newcastle Wind Orchestra and the Sydney Youth Orchestra. Greg has also addressed international conferences of the Internationale Gesellschaft zur Erforschung und Förderung der Blasmusik and World Association of Symphonic Band Ensembles with respect to the development of Australian trombone repertoire and has also been the author of numerous articles for journals in Australia and overseas. He has been described by international trombonist and composer John Kenny “as one of the most interesting trombonists pushing for increased recognition of the trombone anywhere.”
Greg was a part time member of the brass faculty at the Sydney Conservatorium from 1993-2004. He has given masterclasses in Australia and overseas including a period in 1998 as guest lecturer in trombone at the Shanghai Conservatory and later that year, Acting Head of Brass at the Sydney Conservatorium. Greg has also been enterprising as a chamber musician being a founding member of the Early Brass Consort of Sydney and has been active in promoting Opera Australia Brass which made a highly successful concert tour of China in May 2000. Future projects include recordings of repertoire for trombone and organ, recitals for national and local radio as well premieres of a number of his compositions.