Composer of the Month: Anne Boyd

Anne Boyd is one of Australia’s most distinguished composers and music educators who studied with Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney, an institution where she eventually became the first woman to be appointed Professor of Music.

In the interim years she taught at the University of Sussex, and was the Foundation Head of the Department of Music at the University of Hong Kong. Her publisher Faber describes the qualities in her music as ‘transparency, gentleness and delicacy, attributes which reflect her long involvement with Asian tradition, especially those of Japan and Indonesia’. 

Her popular and much performed Goldfish through Summer Rain was composed in 1979 and is one of her most popular compositions.

This will be performed on 27 January as part of the free Australia in Greenwich lunchtime recital at St. Aphege, Greenwich.

Another of her popular works is As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams composed in 1975 for unaccompanied choir. In 1996, Boyd was honoured with an AM in the Order of Australia.