Anne Boyd has enjoyed a distinguished career as a composer and music educator. In 1990 she became the first Australian and the first woman to be appointed Professor of Music at the University of Sydney where her research work focuses upon the influence of landscape and of Asian music upon Australian composers
Born in 1946, Anne Boyd wrote her first compositions as a little girl growing up on a remote outback sheep station in Central Queensland. Much later she became a student of Peter Sculthorpe and inherited through him a lifelong fascination with the musical cultures of South East Asia, especially Japan and Indonesia. Composition is viewed as essentially spiritual and she is much interested in the idea of music as meditation, as a means of changing states of consciousness.
Anne Boyd's best known compositions, which are played throughout the world, include the meditation for solo piano Angklung (1974) one of several works written for, or inspired by, the pianist Roger Woodward; the choral composition A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother; the song cycle for voice and chamber ensemble Meditations on a Chinese Character (1996); Goldfish Through Summer Rain (1979) for flute and piano; and the orchestral work Grathawai (1993).
In 1996 Anne Boyd was honoured with the award of an AM in the Order of Australia for her service to Music as a composer and educator. In 2003, she was conferred Honorary Doctor of the University by the University of York (UK).
For more information visit http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/boyd-anne