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Artist website: http://www.rossedwards.com
One of Australia's best known and most respected composers, Ross Edwards (b. 1943) has created a unique sound world which seeks to reconnect music with elemental forces and restore such qualities as spontaneity and the impulse to dance. Intensely aware of his vocation, he has largely followed his own path, allowing the music to speak for itself. His music, universal in that it is concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding humanity, is at the same time deeply connected to its roots in Australia, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, and from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, notably through birdsong and the mysterious drones of insects.
Ross Edwards's compositions, which are performed worldwide, include five symphonies, concertos, orchestral, chamber and vocal music, children's music, film scores, opera and music for dance. Works designed for the concert hall sometimes require special lighting, movement, costume and visual accompaniment - notable examples are his Fourth Symphony, Star Chant, his Oboe Concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming and The Heart of Night, for shakuhachi and orchestra.
Based in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, he is married with two grown-up children.
In 2010 Ross Edwards completed two commissions for the West Australian Symphony - Elegies and Epiphanies and Spirit Ground. Other recent works include Missa Alchera - Mass of the Dreaming, commissioned by the Brisbane Chamber Choir and Schola Cantorum, and Sacred Kingfisher Psalms, jointly commissioned by Ars Nova Copenhagen, the Edinburgh International Festival Society, The Song Company of Sydney and Ars Musica Australis.
Ross Edwards for the website of the Australian Music Centre— current to September 2010
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