About the austraLYSIS Members

Daniel Blinkhorn (composer, audiovisual artist). Daniel became a composer-member of austraLYSIS in 2010.

Daniel’s music gravitates around the cross-fertilisation of image, sound and performance space, where he is increasingly interested in employing tenets generally (if not somewhat antithetically) found within acousmatic musical environments as structural concepts within works for video and sound. Although typically working in the electroacoustic, audiovisual and videophonic domains, his output includes chamber, symphonic and wind orchestra works, sound installations, music for film, radiophonic pieces and various hybrid/ intermedia environments. Daniel’s works are increasingly performed, exhibited and presented internationally at numerous festivals, concert halls, conferences and loci. Some of the awards and citations his works received between 2006 and 2009 include; Laureate of the 'Luc Ferrari - 8th International Competition d'art Radiophonique Pour Sons Fixés et Instrument' - La Muse en Circuit, Centre National de Création Musicale, France – 2008, Winner of the '9th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition Música Viva’, Portugal - 2008', and nomination for Best Composition by an Australian Composer as part of the APRA/AMC Classical Music Awards - 2009.

He has undertaken residencies in composition and digital media at various institutions including Centre National de Création Musicale, La Muse en Circuit, Paris, Visby International Centre for Composers Sweden, Atlantic Center for the Arts Florida USA, Centre d'arts Orford, Montreal, EcoSono Institute West Indies and the Mamori Artlab, Amazon Basin Brazil. In 2010 he was the Media Artist in Residence at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has studied composition, digital media and education at a number of universities including the College of Fine Arts - University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong - where he received his Doctoral degree. Other degrees include a BMus (Hons), MMus, and a MA(Research). More complete information about Daniel, as well as examples of his work, can be found on his website at: www.bookofsand.com.au

Roger Dean : see separate page.

Sandy Evans (saxophones) After studying at the NSW Conservatorium Sandy played with the Bruce Cale Orchestra, the KMA Orchestra, and Great White Noise. She formed the important group Women and Children First in 1982-3, which recorded, and toured extensively in 1984-5, reaching most parts of Australia. Later she played at the Esso Australian Jazz Summit with her trio, and joined the group Ten Part Invention with which she still plays. In 1987 she worked in the UK, and co-led the saxophone quartet SAXTC with Scottish saxophonist Tony Gorman, while also working in a rhythm and blues band and on Scottish TV. She currently co-leads the band Clarion Fracture Zone, and plays with many other groups including the catholics. She has composed two suites for Ten Part Invention, and much material for her own groups. She also composed and performed music for the dance/ performance piece Walking Long Country and for the Australian Art Orchestra. She has been acclaimed as one of the leaders of a new generation of Australian jazz musicians, and her recordings, such as Blue Shift (an ARIA award winner) with Clarion Fracture Zone have been extremely well received. Subsequent Clarion Fracture Zone releases have appeared on Rufus records, and Sandy is also to the fore on most austraLYSIS recordings including Moving the Landscapes and The Next Room (Tall Poppies). Outside Australia she has performed in Europe, India and Canada, and with austraLYSIS in New Zealand. She was extensively featured, in interview and performance, in the TV series Jazz Az Now on Australian jazz, and in the films Beyond El Rocco and Dr Jazz. In 1993, she was commissioned by austraLYSIS to produce with Hazel Smith the sound-text work Black Desert, presented in the 1993 season, and broadcast on ABC radio in December 1993. In 1995 she became a 'Young Keating' fellow. In 2000 she performed at the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Sydney, and was featured as a soloist on the roof of the Sydney Opera House at the dawn of the new millennium playing Ross Edwards' 'Dawn Mantras' to a worldwide tv audience. She dueted with drummer Han Bennink at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival, 2000, and is a member of Waratah, an innovative trio of saxophone, koto and percussion. She composed Testimony, a major music theatre work for ABC Radio Drama. This piece is a tribute to Charlie Parker and features the poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa. It has been adapted and evolved for performance by the Australian Art Orchestra during the Sydney and Melbourne Festivals in 2002. Sandy was the winner of the Inaugural Bell Award for Australian Jazz Musician of the Year (2003). Sandy has recorded with her own trio, of which the first CD release was Not in the Mood (Newmarket Records). Currently she also has a larger ensemble Gest8, colead with Tony Gorman, and involving Greg White on computer, as well as Satsuki Odamura on koto. It released its first CD on Tall Poppies in 2007. Sandy gave the Peggy Glanville Hicks annual lecture on behalf of the New Music Network in late 2008.

For more info: see her own website.

Sandy Evans

Torbjörn Hultmark (trumpet, composer) was born in Sweden in 1957 and came to live in England in 1985. He currently works as a musician, teacher and composer. Torbjörn studied trumpet, conducting and composition at the Gothenburg Conservatoire of Music and at the National Centre for Orchestral Studies, Goldsmiths' College, London. His teachers were Bengt Eklund (Gothenburg) and John Wallace (London). Alongside his work as a member of Chaconne Brass, Notes Inégales and the Headspace Ensemble, he works with orchestras and ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, The Philharmonia, Chamber Orchestra of Europe as well as film and TV session work. Torbjörn has appeared as a soloist with the Northern Sinfonia, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, the BBC Philharmonic and at the 2007 Albert Hall Proms. Torbjörn's music has been performed extensively and recorded on CD as well as broadcast in Britain on BBC Radio 3, Classic fM and abroad. He was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 in 2009 to write a piece for electroacoustic tape and brass quintet. Torbjörn runs TootProductions, a specialist recording business. He also teaches at the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music.

Peter Jenkin (Clarinets) Born in London, Peter grew up in Adelaide, where he studied with Alan Bray and David Shepherd. He began his professional career as principal clarinet with the State Opera of South Australia. After completing a music degree at Adelaide University he studied with Antony Pay in London and worked with the London Sinfonietta and the Nash Ensemble, and also the Britten Pears Orchestra. Subsequently he was principal clarinet in l'Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon. Since 1985 he has freelanced in Sydney, often appearing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as guest associate principal clarinettist.He is now with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. He has recently given many premieres of solo clarinet works, including those of Margaret Sutherland, Riccardo Formosa, Greg White and Roger Dean. A recording of his performance of a work of Rolf Gelhaar is available on Etcetera; and he is featured on austraLYSIS' cd Windows in Time. He has worked with many ensembles, including recently that for Calculated Risks Opera Productions piece 'Tales of Love', and was a founder of the Sydney Alpha Ensemble. He is also on the staff of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His first solo cd was released by Tall Poppies, with the financial support of the Australia Council, and he has edited music of Margaret Sutherland (Currency Press).

Stephanie McCallum (Piano) has pursued something of a two-pronged career as a soloist. She is known both for her performances of virtuosic music of the 19th-century and also for her advocacy of demanding contemporary solo and ensemble scores. Her CDs of the music of Alkan, Magnard, Boulez, Xenakis and of contemporary Australian composers have received widespread international acclaim. Stephanie was born in Sydney, Australia, and studied at the Sydney Conservatoriumof Music with Alexander Sverjensky and Gordon Watson. After advanced studies in England with noted Alkan exponent, Ronald Smith, she gave a critically acclaimed Wigmore Hall debut in 1982 including what is believed to have been the first performance of Alkan's Chants, opus 70. She is also credited with the first complete performance of his Trois Grandes Etudes, opus 76, in London. Stephanie has appeared extensively as a soloist in the United Kingdom, France and Australia, and has toured Europe with The Alpha Centauri Ensemble. She has appeared as soloist in many festivals, including Brighton, Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Festival of Sydney, Sydney Spring and Mostly Mozart. She was a member of the former contemporary music ensemble Sydney Alpha Ensemble, as joint artistic director. She has played and recorded with austraLYSIS, ELISION and theAustralia Ensemble, and has performed and broadcast as recitalist, chamber performer and concerto soloist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Stephanie appears as soloist on two CDs by the Sydney Alpha Ensemble, Strange Attractions, and Clocks (works of Elena Kats-Chernin) and released a solo CD, Illegal Harmonies: The 20th C Piano. Amongst Stephanie's other recordings is a two-CD release from ABC Classics of all the piano sonatas of Weber. Stephanie has performed the notorious Lemma-Icon-Epigram by Ferneyhough..

Daryl Pratt (percussion) Daryl is one of the most versatile and innovative percussionists. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts, and an MA from the University of California at San Diego. He has studied with John Bergamo, Jean-Charles Francois, Ronald George, Stanley Lunetta and T.H.Subashchandran (South Indian mridangam), amongst others. He has received numerous American awards, and in 1979 was selected as one of America's top ten tertiary percussionists and performed in an International Percussion ensemble at the Percussive Arts Society convention in New York. As a specialist in the performance of contemporary music Daryl has worked with some of the world's foremost composers. He was a member of the Cal Arts Contemporary Players (1976-7), and Sonor, directed by Bernard Rands (1977-84). He has been timpanist with the La Jolla Civic Orchestra, and with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra (since he came to Australia in 1985, and until 1991). He has also performed with the San Diego Symphony. He remains a member of Pipeline, a contemporary music project that he founded with Simone de Haan in 1987. He also leads his own jazz-oriented group Sonic Fiction, with cds on Naxos and Tall Poppies. He has played with austraLYSIS since 1991, both in composed and improvised contexts. He has also recorded with Atmasphere, with fellow percussionist David Jones. Daryl is a composer and educator, and his compositions include commissions funded by the Australia Council, and premieres by Synergy Percussion. He has taught at ECC, UCSD, and Canberra School of Music, and moved to Sydney in 1991 to head the percussion department at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His current involvement is particularly with MIDI-computer interaction. He has performed also with Chad Wackerman.

Ian Shanahan (recorders; composer) Ian's compositions, most of which are now commercially available on CD, have been performed both locally and internationally to much critical acclaim. His work [p]s(t)ellor/mneme won the inaugural Sydney Spring Composition Award in 1997. Ian is also actrive as a self taught recorder virtuoso, and promoter of new music for his instrument. He has commissioned composers from Australia and overseas to write for him, given many performances, workshops and recordings of their works, as well as lecturing, broadcasting and writing widely about the rich possibilities of the recorder. Several of Ian's recordings involve performances by austraLYSIS or solo performances presented by austraLYSIS.

Phil Slater is a trumpeter and composer based in Sydney. He is the leader or co-leader of several prominent Australian groups, including Band of Five Names and the Phil Slater Quartet. He has performed with a wide range of artists both in Australia and abroad, including Simon Barker's Daorum, Matt McMahon's Paths and Streams, Lou Reed, Sandy Evans' GEST8, Baecastuff, Bobby Previte, Jim Black, Barney McAll, Mike Nock, Missy Higgins, Karaikudi R. Mani, and the Australian Art Orchestra. He has released two recordings as a leader: Strobe Coma Virgo (2002), and The Thousands (2007). Phil has performed with austraLYSIS since 2001. Visit his website.

Hazel Smith : see separate page.

Greg White (sound manipulation, sound projection, computers)

Greg is a composer, music producer and performer whose creative output has been performed, published, broadcast and exhibited throughout Australia, USA, UK, France, Germany, Poland, Hong Kong, China, New Caledonia, Venezuela and Brazil. Greg has composed or produced music for 14 feature films, 5 TV series, 25 theatre productions, 12 installations in public spaces and over 100 CD releases. As an educator he has designed and presented music courses at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Australian Film Television and Radio School, Macquarie University and the Australian Institute of Music. He has been a member of austraLYSIS for 15 years, performs with the improvisation ensemble Gest8, and is currently head of Composition & Music Production at the Australian Institute of Music.
     

As composer/guitarist with such ensembles as 'Plash' (in the 1970's with Jim Denley and Peter Ready) and 'Orison' (in the 1980's with Peter Schaefer and Keith Manning) he was drawn towards the emerging music technology as a creative tool. His current interests lie in the new performance directions possible with computer technology, both live and in the studio. In an early collaborative project he applied the new object software technology to music composition and performance, and these ideas continued in his activities at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; and at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and Macquarie University, in innovative work with Jon Drummond and Richard Vella. His commissions include Purple Rain, for string quartet and digital processing (ABC Commission), Trace for voice, clarinet, guitar and samplers (2MBS commission), Orchid for clarinet and interactive MIDI (for Peter Jenkin), Blast for trumpet and drum machine (for Ivan Hunter) and The Silence of Eyes for speaker, clarinet, keyboard and computer program (for austraLYSIS). The Glass Bead Game is one of his MAX-interactive works (also for austraLYSIS). Greg's website is at www.greatwhitenoise.com.au.

David Worrall (composer. programmer, sound spatialisation expert)

David became a member of austraLYSIS in 2004. He is a freelance experimental composer and sound artist working in sound sculpture and immersive polymedia as well as traditional instrumental composition. He performs and exhibits internationally.Worrall studied music composition at the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide with Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, Richard Meale and Tristram Cary. Other papers were in mathematics and philosophy. He has won several composition and research awards. He joined the Faculty of Music at Melbourne University in 1979 where he taught twentieth- century music composition techniques and orchestration as well as undertaking research in computer music. In 1981 he designed and taught the first undergraduate course in computer music in Australia. In 1986 he was appointed Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Canberra School of Music. He established and became the Foundation Head of the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology (ACAT) at the Australian National University in 1989, a position he held for over a decade. During that time ACAT offered the first Australian postgraduate degrees in Electronic Arts. David has held artist-in- residence and visiting fellowship positions in universities in Australia, UK, France, Spain and the USA.Worrall was a founding member of the Electronic Music Foundation and the Music Council of Australia and has served on a number of organisational boards, including the Australia Council’s Music and Innovative Projects (later Mixed Media) Boards, the Australian Music Centre and as president of the Australasian Computer Music Association.In addition to his artistic activities, Worrall designs and builds portable multimedia event spaces, speculates in the capital markets and teaches technical analysis and trading. His PhD, partially funded by the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre, was on the development of a software framework for the sonification of information in large or high-frequency multivariatedatasets such as from trading engines. He recently received Australia Council funding to develop a voice-synthesiser with Australian dialect pronunciation. Visit his website.

BOOKINGS and Enquiries to : austraLYSIS, PO Box 225, Milperra, NSW 2214. Telephone : + 61 2 9501 5399. email : dr.metagroove@mindless.com.