composers
Wendy Hiscocks's music is imbued with her love of dance and by a natural melodic sense. While tonally based, her music uses many different scales and modes, savouring the colour and character of the twelve notes of the octave and their varied combinations. For her, music is to the ears as light to the eyes, and her most recent works explore sound in the same way as many of her favourite painters (from Turner to Lloyd Rees) explore colour and light.
Born in Wollongong (Australia), Wendy began playing the piano at an early age. In her teens she started composing, and went on to study composition with Peter Sculthorpe at Sydney University. In the three years after her graduation, her work with schoolchildren established composition as an accredited subject in the West Australian school syllabus.
Since moving to London in 1987, Wendy Hiscocks has had works performed and broadcast worldwide, including London's South Bank and Wigmore Hall, BBC and Australian ABC broadcasts, and major Festivals in the UK and elsewhere. She has been awarded commissions through the Arts Council of England, the Australia Council, and the Schubert Ensemble's Chamber Music 2000 project. Her music has been premièred, recorded and broadcast by singers Natalia Afeyan, Elizabeth Connell, Vivien Hamilton, Naomi Itami, Merlyn Quayfe, Sarah Redgwick, Damien Top, Keith Hempton, violinists Miwako Abe and Carolyn Lam, cellist Matthias Feile, pianists
Jeanell Carrigan, Roy Howat, Yvonne Lau, Sally Mays and (8-year-old) Cordelia Williams, the chamber groups Triangulus, Ku-ring-gai Virtuosi and English Serenata, and the Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge.
The first piece of her children's piano collection Light is on the Grade 1 syllabus of the Fédération française des Écoles de Musique; her piano suite The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is on the Licentiate syllabus of the Australian Music Examinations Board.
Wendy Hiscocks's music mixes her Australian origins with international flavour: she has set Bulgarian poetry in the original language, and her works for young performers embrace folk material from around the world. Her worldwide interests are reflected in her cantata Libretto of the Eight Year Old (a worldwide journey seen through the eyes of a child), and
she has formed a strong link with the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. Some recent works also take inspiration from Latvian folk sources.
Most of Wendy Hiscocks's music is available from the Australian Music Centre. Under the name 'Creativity & Music' she gives composition courses for children in various countries.Wendy's appearances as pianist have included London's South Bank, Festivals and radio broadcasts in the UK, France and Australia, and on a CD of Chabrier piano music (with her pianist husband Roy Howat) for the French label STIL.Australian Music Centre
Chabrier piano music
Wendy Hiscocks
Wendy Hiscocks's music is imbued with her love of dance and by a natural melodic sense. While tonally based, her music uses many different scales and modes, savouring the colour and character of the twelve notes of the octave and their varied combinations. For her, music is to the ears as light to the eyes, and her most recent works explore sound in the same way as many of her favourite painters (from Turner to Lloyd Rees) explore colour and light. Born in Wollongong (Australia), Wendy began playing the piano at an early age. In her teens she started composing, and went on to study composition with Peter Sculthorpe at Sydney University. In the three years after her graduation, her work with schoolchildren established composition as an accredited subject in the West Australian school syllabus.
Since moving to London in 1987, Wendy Hiscocks has had works performed and broadcast worldwide, including London's South Bank and Wigmore Hall, BBC and Australian ABC broadcasts, and major Festivals in the UK and elsewhere. She has been awarded commissions through the Arts Council of England, the Australia Council, and the Schubert Ensemble's Chamber Music 2000 project. Her music has been premièred, recorded and broadcast by singers Natalia Afeyan, Elizabeth Connell, Vivien Hamilton, Naomi Itami, Merlyn Quayfe, Sarah Redgwick, Damien Top, Keith Hempton, violinists Miwako Abe and Carolyn Lam, cellist Matthias Feile, pianists
Jeanell Carrigan, Roy Howat, Yvonne Lau, Sally Mays and (8-year-old) Cordelia Williams, the chamber groups Triangulus, Ku-ring-gai Virtuosi and English Serenata, and the Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge.
The first piece of her children's piano collection Light is on the Grade 1 syllabus of the Fédération française des Écoles de Musique; her piano suite The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is on the Licentiate syllabus of the Australian Music Examinations Board.
Wendy Hiscocks's music mixes her Australian origins with international flavour: she has set Bulgarian poetry in the original language, and her works for young performers embrace folk material from around the world. Her worldwide interests are reflected in her cantata Libretto of the Eight Year Old (a worldwide journey seen through the eyes of a child), and
she has formed a strong link with the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. Some recent works also take inspiration from Latvian folk sources.
Most of Wendy Hiscocks's music is available from the Australian Music Centre. Under the name 'Creativity & Music' she gives composition courses for children in various countries.Wendy's appearances as pianist have included London's South Bank, Festivals and radio broadcasts in the UK, France and Australia, and on a CD of Chabrier piano music (with her pianist husband Roy Howat) for the French label STIL.Australian Music Centre
Chabrier piano music
- Judith Weir
A collection of 20 works drawn from The Schubert Ensemble's Chamber Music 2000 series.
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A second collection of 17 Chamber Music 2000 pieces recorded by the Schubert Ensemble.
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All Chamber Music 2000 scores and parts are available from the
British Music Information Centre
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