Composers
John Corley
Growing up in the Salvation Army, John has been surrounded by music from an early age. He featured as a Cornet and Trumpet soloist with various ensembles in Melbourne during his teens and then pursued a career in aviation keeping music as a much-loved hobby.
John’s arrangement of Widor’s Toccata was performed and recorded by the Melbourne Staff Band of the Salvation Army in 2001.
In 2020 John won the Southern Highlands Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition with his Orchestral setting of John Gillespie Magee’s poem “High Flight”. Subsequently this has lead to several commissioned works and performances including piano duets for Ann Carr-Boyd AM, an orchestral overture for the The Southern Highlands Symphony Orchestra and a suite of miniatures for The Highlands Sinfonia. John was privileged to be asked to write by Carolyn Lowry OAM for the Humming Chorus Project during the Covid lockdowns.
As a performer John has played with numerous Salvation Army bands as well as being a featured soloist twice with the Melbourne Staff band and on Hurstville Salvation Army Bands 1995 tour of South Africa and Zimbabwe. He played for a number of years with Warringah Concert Brass and more recently with the Southern Highlands Concert Band and The Southern Highlands Symphony Orchestra. John was thrilled in 2018 to perform John Carmichael’s Trumpet Concerto with The Southern Highlands Symphony Orchestra.
John works as an International Airline Pilot and enjoys exploring the many varied destinations he gets to visit. He lives in Bowral with his wife, two children and a much loved Cavoodle.