Authors
Max Cooke and Fay Woodhouse
Max Cooke OAM has been performing and teaching piano in Melbourne and internationally for over 50 years. At 88 he remains a successful and sought-after teacher and performer; he regularly gives lecture tours overseas. He performs solo and chamber music and is a co-founder and artistic director of the Australian National Piano Award, Shepparton. In 1988 he formed the Team of Pianists with Robert Chamberlain, Darryl Coote and later Rohan Murray. He was invited to become a Fellow of the Australian College of Education in 1988 and in the Queen's Birthday Honours lists of 1998 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for 'service to music education especially pedagogy and the development of music students'. In 2001, Max Cooke was made an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Dr Fay Woodhouse is an accomplished historian, researcher and biographer. She has a strong background in Australian and Victorian history and heritage. One of her forthcoming projects includes a 50-year history of Monash University Law School. Fay is the Victorian researcher for The Australian Dictionary of Biography and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Historical Studies, The University of Melbourne.
Pedagogue on the Platform is available online.
Rita Crews and Julie Spithill
Dr Rita Crews is President of the Music Teachers' Association of NSW and editor of The Studio journal, Deputy Chair of the Australian Music Examinations Board (NSW), an examiner for both the AMEB and the IBO and the AMEB Syllabus Advisor for written subjects and author of many reviews and articles. In 1992-93 the Cambridge Biographical Centre honoured her with the award of International Woman of the Year for services to music education. In 2002, she was created a Fellow of the Australian Society of Musicology and Composition for her contribution to Australian music.
Julie Spithill studied at the NSW Conservatorium of Music under Alexander Sverjensky (DSCM). She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and Education, and a Masters in Music Education. Following advanced studies overseas where she focused on music theory, jazz pedagogy, composition and improvisation, and now holds a position in the Jazz Department of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Julie is an active participant in and the coordinator of numerous clinics and workshops on various aspects of aural perception and performance styles.
Rita and Julie are co-authors of100 Years a history of the Music Teachers' Association NSW 1912- 2012.
Lynn Douglas
The daughter of Clive, Lynne Douglas is an artist, writer and teacher. After working as an illustrator in both Melbourne and London, she wrote, produced and performed one-woman presentations in Melbourne. Extensive travel and work in both Europe, Asia and the Pacific has resulted in fictional writing projects. The Golden Age, is her first published biography.
Alfred Hill (1869-1960)
While he was born in Melbourne and died in Sydney, Alfred Hill lived in New Zealand from the age of two until seventeen after which he began studies at the Royal Conservatorium of Music in Leipzig. After completion in 1891 of his studies in composition, violin and piano, he lived principally in Wellington until 1910 then resumed residency in Sydney which remained his home for the rest of his long life. He is truly a national treasure of both Australia and New Zealand and the only significant composer of these tow countries who represents the late romantic era. While the influences of his immediate predecessors such as Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikowsky, Wagner and Strauss are clearly obvious in his early works, his style evolved to a limited degree with some absorption of later styles, though with a deliberate rejection of a break from the long established traditions of Europe. Hill's prolific output included ten operas, thirteen symphonies, seventeen string quartets, major choral works, concertos, chamber music, sonatas and hundreds of songs and short works for a variety of instruments, but sadly very few have been published and so are unavailable therefore audiences are denied the opportunity to experience a genre of music that is as rich as it is vast. Hill was a violinist, violist, cornettist and conductor, though composition was clearly his first calling.His use of Maori music and references to Maori culture were enduring and he later developed an interest in the music of the Australian aborigines.
The Leipzig Diary, edited by Donald Maurice, is an amazing, almost daily, account of musical life in Leipzig in a Golden Age through the eyes and ears a budding young colonial composer. Leipzig was host to a steady stream of names who are now enshrined as the greatest of the greats from the Romantic era. We are treated to first-hand accounts of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Bruch, Reinecke, Sarasate, Joachim, Strauss and Sitt, to mention but a few.
Brennan Keats
Brennan Keats was born in Mosman, NSW, the son of the composer, Horace Keats and the broadcaster and recitalist, Barbara Russell. He studied organ with Faunce Allman at St James Church, Sydney and piano with Gordon Watson at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. For many years he was an organist and later accompanied singers as a pianist in an an amateur capacity.
He became Associate of the Australian Society of Accountants in 1966, and Fellow in 1991 and graduated from Macquarie University in 1985 with Bachelor of Arts. He is author of Real Estate Accounting, first published by Harper & Rowe, and over 100 other text books for bookkeeping and accountancy. With 14 years practicing as an Accountant in commercial industry and 20 years as teacher of Accountancy and Law he retired in 1988 to further his career in publishing.
Brennan is author of A Poet's Composer, the biography of Horace Keats (1895-1945) and his association with some of his contemporary artists such as Peter Dawson, Barbara Russell and the poets, Kenneth Mackenzie, Hugh McCrae, Christopher Brennan and many others; and Quiet Waters, a history of HMAS Canberra [1] and his brother Russell, a flautist and organist, who died in her.
Brennan's interest in composing developed many years ago and since then he has arranged a number of his father's works, whose composition he greatly admires, but has taken greater interest in instrumental and choral writing and has had a number of works published.
In 1987 he and his wife commenced Publications by Wirripang, later to become Wirripang Pty Ltd, specialising in the publishing of books and fine Australian music and especially, establishing a means of preserving the music of these Australian composers so their music will not be lost to future generations.
Jonathan Little
Jonathan is a member of the Society of Authors, and continues to write and edit works on a variety of music-related topics, ranging from historical works discussing instrumentation and orchestration, to more topical writings on popular music performance and the future of the music and entertainment industries. In 2001, he co-founded Music Business Journal, and was for five years its joint Managing Editor. In a seminal series of articles commissioned for American Outlook magazine, published by the Hudson Institute (2001-02) – a US scholarly think-tank which helps shape government policy – Jonathan assessed the state of contemporary songwriting, the phenomenon of the celestial jukebox, and the implications of the rise of digital cinema. Jonathan was Series Editor of the Academy of Contemporary Music’s definitive 36-volume guide, The Academy Popular Music Tuition Series (2003-05), and, at the request of the British Academy, he contributed to Heart & Soul: Revealing the Craft of Songwriting, published by Sanctuary to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2005 he was appointed first Consultant Editor to A&C Black’s flagship volume of musical reference, the "> During 2010-13 five new book titles are being issued (two published by Wirripang):
- The Influence of European Literary and Artistic Representations of the 'Orient' on Western Orchestral Compositions, ca.1840-1920: From Oriental Inspiration to 'Exotic' Orchestration (New York: Mellen Press, 2010); a companion to:
- Literary Sources of Nineteenth-Century Musical Orientalism: The Hypnotic Spell of the Exotic on Music of the Romantic Period (New York: Mellen Press, 2011). (This comprehensive two-volume, 950-page study of exoticism in music and literature received a UK Authors' Foundation / Royal Literary Fund Award for 2011.)
- Forms and Possibilities: Selected Verse (1983-2002), with an Essay ...An Appreciation and a Defence of the Artist's Temperament (including 16 modern sonnets using antique forms) (Wollongong: Wirripang, 2011)
- On Musical Composition: A Philosophy of and an Approach to Early 21st-Century Concert Music Composition (Wollongong: Wirripang, 2012/13)
- Practical Songwriting (London: Robert Hale, 2013)
Jonathan appears in the UK Music Publishers’ Association Register of Expert Musicologists, and is a member of the Fellowship of Australian Composers, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and of the Los Angeles Chapter of America’s National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).
From 2001-2006, Jonathan was Principal of the Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM) in Guildford, England – Europe’s largest specialist academy for students of contemporary music, and the first education institution to win the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Innovation category). He also helped establish the first contemporary music degree course in Italy (in Bologna), and in South Africa (at COPA), and has worked as Curriculum Consultant to the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, and as Visiting Lecturer in Media Music Composition at the University of Surrey. Currently, Jonathan is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Chichester.
For more detailed biographical notes on Jonathan
Patrick Thomas
Noted conductor, broadcaster and writer, Patrick Thomas MBE, first broadcast for the ABC in Brisbane aged 12 and soon gained a reputation as an outstanding flautist and piccolo player. A one-time church organist, his career in the performing arts has extended over sixty years and, for much of that time, as a familiar figure on Australia's national music scene where he has conducted many hundreds of concerts. For 22 years he held directional appointments with no fewer than four ABC Orchestras including the South Australian Symphony and the ABC's National Radio Chorus (The Adelaide Singers), finally being appointed the ABC's Federal Conductor-in-Residence. He served as the Queensland Symphohy Orchestra's first (and still the only) Queensland-born Chief Conductor (1973-77). Overseas, he appeared in many countries as Guest Conductor of such orchestras as the Moscow Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Hallé, Polish National Radio and Television, Munich Philharmonic, BBC Orchestras, CBC, Prague Radio Symphony, and many others in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ireland, Japan and South Africa. In New Zealand, he made concert and TV appearances with the NZSO and various other orchestras, and also appeared as an opera conductor, including many seasons as Artistic Director of the Wellington City Opera (1988-91). Other successful facets of his career have been as presenter in concerts; broadcaster, interviewer; and as a prolific recording artist with releases on Australian and overseas labels. Well over one million young Australians would have shared his radio and TV schools broadcasts, or attended his live ABC schools concerts in all States.
Thomas also become known as a conductor who could step in when other conductors withdrew from performances at the last minute and he saved many such situations through his career. On July 8, 1985, in The Sydney Morning Herald, music critic, David Vance wrote: "When, at extremely short notice, Patrick Thomas took to the Concert Hall podium last Monday evening to replace an indisposed Sir Charles Mackerras, he did so without a rehearsal. There simply wasn't time. Before him lay Handel's Fireworks Music, the Walton Violin Concerto and Dvořák's. Eighth Symphony. Dvořák has its fair share of problems for the conductor and Walton's Concerto required a virtuosic maestro as well as a virtuosic soloist. It was a work Thomas had not previously conducted ... If Monday's concert was impressive, Tuesday's was even more so. The superb playing of the 27-year-old Nigel Kennedy was matched in interpretive skill by Patrick Thomas's direction. Polished and exciting, his performance was a personal triumph that served the music with equal credit".
Among his published works are an autobiography, Upbeats and Downbeats - A Conductor's Life (Wirripang 2010); a professional monography, Overture to Conducting (Keys Press 1988); and from 500 poems: four anthologies: A Conductor's Musings (2MBS-FM 2003), A Music Lover's Anthology (Wirripang 2008), Symphony of Limericks (Wirripang 2009) and Kaleidoscope (Wirripang 2011); Music in Brisbane and the QSO (Wirripang 2012), Thoughts and Reflections - Poems for Pleasure (Wirripang 2013) and children's stories (for grandson, Nicholas) in addition to many scripts for ABC Classic FM and the MBS-FM stations.
Christina Whiteley
Christina Whiteley has post graduate qualifications in education, librarianship and music. With forty-five years' teaching experience, thirty-two of which as an accredited private piano teacher operating a ssuccessful piano studio.
Christina has written this book, On Keys and Covers, to share her knowledge about colonial piano music. This, along with the much-neglected repertoire of British piano music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has been a special interest of hers. She has a large collection of British keyboard music going back as far as the late 1400s and over the years she has also collected several colonial piano scores, following the transference of British piano music into the new colony after settlement.