‘My dear friend, all theory is grey – life's golden tree alone is green.’* – Goethe Not so long ago, we who were brought up in western cultures were taught to believe that nature was ruthlessly competitive, that ‘survival of the fittest’ operated at all levels of life, from species to individuals. These ‘grey’ theories (as Goethe would surely have called them) became the dominant paradigm in western thinking, supported and reinforced by our emphasis on individualism and interpersonal competitiveness, and by our veneration of science that abstracts itself from life and love and only deals with what is measurable and (allegedly) rational. Eventually, however, anthropologists started to realize that humanity’s ability to cooperate might have been more important to its survival than [...]

https://youtu.be/o-XOBAJksgQ This video is a brief introduction to my latest composition, a double concerto for cor anglais and bassoon. I’ve titled it ‘Kin’ because of the obvious kinship between these two instruments – both woodwinds played with a double reed, both occupying the mid-to-lower part of the full orchestral range, and, especially in the two octaves where their ranges overlap, both having somewhat similar although distinctive timbres. Despite their superficial kinship, however, the cor anglais and bassoon have different family histories, the cor anglais having developed historically from the oboe, the bassoon from earlier bass double-reed instruments such as the dulcian. The cor anglais is also played by oboists who relish its lower range, not bassoonists who yearn to go even higher than the [...]

Making music, or making art in any other form, is to me not just self-expression but also an act of giving. What I give, or hope to give, is not something that comes uniquely from me – my style, my intellectual construction, my individual view, my personal emotions – but something that comes through me: beauty, meaning, a sense that there is something greater than me or any other individual human being. That ‘something greater’ might be Nature, God, Love, Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’, Buddha Nature, the Tao, or something even less definable and nameable – but whatever you call it, it’s where beauty and meaning originate, and it’s that that I hope to reflect in my music. Recently I discovered an article about [...]

My latest release is ‘Half-Heard’, a song that is (I think) about Tasmania. To decide for yourself whether that’s true or not, read on – but first watch and listen to the song: https://youtu.be/XDyFCpyhGFM   A song about Tasmania? Australian author Christopher (C. J.) Koch (1922 – 2013) is best known for novels such as The Year of Living Dangerously, but his first published work was in fact a small poem called ‘Half-Heard’. For a brief time in the mid 1990’s Chris and I were next-door neighbours in Launceston, Tasmania. During our discussions of music and writing he introduced me to his poetry, and when I expressed admiration for 'Half-Heard' he encouraged me to set it to music. Life intervened, however, and I [...]

Video and audio recordings of a new performance of my song The Lay of the Last Survivor have now been released – its first professional performance and the first time it has been performed the way I originally intended. Janneke Ferwerda (soprano) and Tijana Kozarcic (harp) sang and played beautifully in the rich acoustics and visual surroundings of the Auburn Uniting Church, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia:https://youtu.be/8t_qfd4Q_isHigher quality audio recordings of The Lay of the Last Survivor than in the video are now available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon etc.:  Spotify  Apple Music  Amazon  YouTubeThe Lay of the Last Survivor is a passage in the ca. 8th century Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, the lament of the last remaining member of a society [...]

Climates of the Mind, my collection of orchestral pieces representing various moods and states of mind, is now an album, available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Deezer and elsewhere (links at the end of this blog). Here are some notes on the individual tracks of Climates of the Mind: Nonchalance Nonchalance means behaving as if you are calm and carefree despite an underlying sense of unease or anxiety. In this music I had in mind the idea of a person (represented by the solo bassoon) moving nonchalantly through a variety of different environments, trying hard to stay “cool” and ignore the fact that all may not be quite as safe or predictable as it seems. Only at the very end does the mask [...]

Nature is a constant theme in my music and in the videos I have made with my music. My music is natural music, in the sense that it’s all in harmony with the laws of nature. I will explain what I mean by this in a blog I’ll be posting soon. Meanwhile, here is something that is not music but also reflects that connection between humans and nature that many of us feel instinctively. A few times in my life – times of intense feeling – an urge has come upon me to write poetry. I started this poem many years ago and almost finished it, but there were two or three lines I could never seem to find the right words for. [...]

Finally, after many delays, this website is up and running! The aim of this site is simply to make my music known and available to more people. I've been writing music for many years and a few of my compositions have been performed in public, but until now they have not been available to a wider audience. This site and my CD Baby page (link below) now make my music available to listeners anywhere, and to any musicians or singers who want to perform it. There is another aim to this site though. Many people think modern classical music is obscure, difficult, elitist, or just plain unpleasant. I want to promote the idea that contemporary classical music can be accessible, tuneful and user-friendly, [...]