Graeme Koehne
Encyclopedia
Graeme Koehne is an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n composer and music educator. He is best known for his orchestral and ballet scores, which are characterised by direct communicative style and embrace of triadic tonality
Triad (music)
In music and music theory, a triad is a three-note chord that can be stacked in thirds. Its members, when actually stacked in thirds, from lowest pitched tone to highest, are called:* the Root...

. His orchestral trilogy Unchained Melody, Powerhouse, and Elevator Music makes allusions to Hollywood film score traditions, cartoon music, popular Latin music and other dance forms. He cites influences from "much-maligned and misunderstood" work by composers Les Baxter
Les Baxter
Les Baxter was an American musician and composer.Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer...

, Nelson Riddle
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...

, Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...

 and John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...

.

Life and career

Koehne was born in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

. He completed his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the Elder Conservatorium of Music
Elder Conservatorium
The Elder Conservatorium of Music is Australia's senior academy of music and one of the country's most distinguished institutions for comprehensive education, professional training, and research in music...

, University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...

, studying composition with Richard Meale
Richard Meale
Richard Graham Meale, AM, MBE was an Australian composer of instrumental works and operas.-Biography:Meale was born in Sydney and studied piano with Winifred Burston at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, as well as clarinet, harp, music history and theory, before studying at the University of...

.

In 1984, Koehne was awarded the Harkness Fellowship
Harkness Fellowship
The Harkness Fellowships are a programme run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. They were established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several countries to spend time studying in the United States...

 to work at the School of Music
Yale School of Music
The Yale School of Music is one of the twelve professional schools at Yale University and one of the premier music conservatories in the world....

, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

. Here he studied with Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...

 and Jacob Druckman
Jacob Druckman
Jacob Druckman was an American composer born in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar. In 1949 and 1950 he studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood and later continued his studies at the École Normale de...

. For two years of the fellowship he also took private lessons with Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...

 in New York, whose influence is immediately discernible in the radically simplified, direct and anti-modern style of subsequent scores.

He returned to Australia in 1986 and was appointed Lecturer in Composition at the Elder Conservatorium of Music.

He gained national attention at the 1992 Adelaide Festival of Arts
Adelaide Festival of Arts
The Adelaide Festival of Arts is an arts festival held biennially in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Although locally considered to be one of the world's greatest celebrations of the arts, that is internationally renowned and the pre-eminent cultural event in Australia, it is actually...

 when he was awarded the Young Composers Prize for his orchestral work Rainforest. Around this time, Graeme commenced his long and fruitful collaboration with choreographer Graeme Murphy
Graeme Murphy
Graeme Murphy is an Australian dance choreographer. Together with his fellow dancer Janet Vernon, he has guided Sydney Dance Company to become one of Australia's most successful and well-known dance companies....

, which included a children's ballet based on Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's The Selfish Giant and the full-length work Nearly Beloved.

As of 2005, Koehne is Head of Composition at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. Until recently he also chaired the Music Board of the Australia Council
Australia Council
The Australia Council, informally known as the Australia Council for the Arts, is the official arts council or arts funding body of the Government of Australia.-Function:...

 and was a Board Member of the Council.

Ballets

  • Nearly Beloved (1986; Sydney Dance Company)
  • Nocturnes, 1914 (Australian Ballet)
  • The Selfish Giant (1983; Sydney Dance Company)
  • Tivoli (2001; Sydney Dance Company/Australian Ballet co-production)

Chamber music

  • String Quartet
  • To His Servant Bach God Grants a Final Glimpse - The Morning Star (1989; also transcribed as organ trio)

Orchestral

  • Rainforest (c. 1982)
  • Unchained Melody (1991)
  • Powerhouse (1993)
  • Elevator Music (1997)
  • Way Out West (2000)
  • Sleep of Reason (2008)

APRA Awards

  • 2009
    APRA Awards of 2009
    The Australasian Performing Right Association Awards of 2009 are a series of awards which include the APRA Music Awards, Classical Music Awards, and Screen Music Awards. The APRA Music Awards ceremony occurred on 23 June at the Peninsula in Melbourne, they were presented by APRA and the...

     Orchestral Work of the Year win for Tivoli Dances and nomination for Palm Court Suite both composed by Graeme Koehne and performed by Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
    Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
    The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the smallest of the six orchestras established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation .-Activities:...

     conducted by Richard Mills
    Richard Mills
    Richard John Mills AM, DMus BA Qld, is an Australian conductor and composer. He currently works as Artistic Director of the West Australian Opera and Artistic Consultant with Orchestra Victoria...

    .

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK