Gordon Kerry - Featured Composer
Gordon Kerry’s works for the 2017-18 season include The Snow Queen, with John Kinsella for Victorian Opera, his String Quartet No.5 for the Acacia Quartet, String Quintet No.2 for the Australian String Quartet and Pieter Wispelwey, Victorian Pastoral for Young Voices of Melbourne, Exaudi Youth Choir and Ensemble Liaison, and Drei Jahreszeitenslieder for soprano Merlyn Quaife and Plexus. Other recent pieces include Three Malouf Songs, Snow White and other Grimm Tales (libretto by John Kinsella), the violin concerto Now Dream thy Sails, Jean à Jean for baritone and piano and chamber works while the music lasts for the Australia Ensemble and Making Signs for Syzygy.
Gordon was featured composer with Musica Viva Australia in 2012, and his piano quintet Aroona Dawning was performed at Musica Viva’s Huntington Estate Festival in 2013. The year 2012 also saw the premiere of Midnight Son, to Louis Nowra’s libretto, with Victorian Opera, which won several of that year‘s Green Room Awards. The Established Composer Fellowship from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust in 2009 supported his Symphony for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the flute concerto Captain Flinders’ Musick for Alison Mitchell and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. His book New Classical Music: Composing Australia, which examined aspects of Australian music over the previous 30 years was published in 2009. In 2008 he was composer-in-residence at the Australian National Academy of Music.
He has composed orchestral music, including concertos for clarinet, trumpet, viola and cello, for Symphony Australia, the BBC, and several youth orchestras; chamber music for ensembles in Australia, Britain, Germany, the USA, Sweden and Russia; and a number of choral and vocal works. Medea, to Justin Macdonnell’s libretto, has been performed in Australia and the USA by Chamber Made Opera and in Germany by the Berliner Kammeroper. His scores and recordings are available from the Australian Music Centre. He occasionally writes for the Music Trust’s Loudmouth e-zine. He tweets from @gordonkerry.
Gordon Kerry studied composition with Barry Conyngham and has held fellowships from the Australia Council, Peggy Glanville-Hicks Trust and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He lives on a hill in north-eastern Victoria.
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