In Conversation with Anne Boyd

Internationally-renowned composer Anne Boyd is in conversation with
composer Thomas Metcalf, discussing her life and music ahead of a
performance of her String Quartet No. 2 ’Play on the Water’ later
this year. This is part of the TORCH project ‘Pixelating the
River’: Engagement with Contemporary Music through Graphical
Inputs, played by the Kreutzer Quartet, alongside a new work by
Thomas Metcalf. Professor Anne Boyd AM is one of Australia’s most
distinguished composers and music educators. Her undergraduate
studies were in the Department of Music at the University of
Sydney, where Peter Sculthorpe was her earliest and most
influential composition teacher. The award of a Commonwealth
Scholarship enabled her to undertake a PhD in composition at the
University of York (1969-72), where her supervisors were Wilfrid
Mellers and Bernard Rands. In 1990, Boyd became the first
Australian (and the first woman) to be appointed Professor of Music
at the University of Sydney. Before this, she was the Foundation
Head of the Department of Music at the University of Hong Kong
(1981–90) and taught at the University of Sussex (1972–77). The
hallmarks of her musical style are its transparency, gentleness and
delicacy, attributes which reflect her long involvement with Asian
traditions, especially those of Japan and Indonesia. Two solo CDs
of her music are Meditations on a Chinese Character (ABC Classics,
1997) and Crossing a Bridge of Dreams (Tall Poppies, 2000).
Professor Boyd was honoured with an AM in the Order of Australia in
1996, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of York in 2003,
the Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award at the
APRA-AMC Classical Music Awards in 2005 and the 2014 Sir Bernard
Heinz Award for service to music in Australia. Biography taken from
Faber Music, 2021 Thomas Metcalf is a composer and DPhil candidate
in Music at Oxford University (Worcester College), where he is
researching the transformation of graphical spaces into
determinately–notated music – focusing on a range of composers in
the 20th and 21st centuries. His research has been recognised in
the UK and internationally, appearing in peer-reviewed journals as
well as diverse conference settings in Europe. Beginning his
composition training with Robert Saxton at Oxford in October 2014,
Thomas subsequently achieved a first–class BA in Music and an MSt
in Composition with distinction as the Ogilvie–Thompson Scholar of
Worcester College. Since January 2020, Thomas has studied with
Kenneth Hesketh, focusing specifically on graphical methods of
determinate composition, a process that is present in much of
Hesketh’s recent work. Thomas’s works have been performed by a
variety of ensembles, such as the ANIMA Collective, BBC Singers,
Christ Church Cathedral Choir, GBSR Duo, Oxford Philharmonic, St.
Pancras Parish Church Choir, and the Villiers Quartet. He has
worked with composers such as Judith Weir, Michael Zev Gordon,
Henning Kraggerud, and Dario Marianelli. He has also collaborated
with festivals such as Oxford Lieder Festival (2018), Oxford
Chamber Music Festival (2019), and the Vale of Glamorgan Festival
(as part of the Peter Reynolds Composers Studio) (2020).