Carl Vine Carl Vine

 Carl Vine, AO (born 8 October 1954), is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music. From 1975 he has worked as a freelance pianist and composer with a variety of theatre and dance companies, and ensembles. Vine's catalogue includes seven symphonies, eleven concertos, music for film, television and theatre, electronic music and numerous chamber works. Since 2000 he has been the Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia. In 2005 he was awarded the Don Banks Music Award. In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Vine was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), "for distinguished service to the performing arts as a composer, conductor, academic and artistic director, and to the support and mentoring of emerging performers."

Career

Vine was born in Perth, Western Australia. He played the cornet from the age of 5, and took up the piano when he was 10. A teenage fascination with the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen inspired a period of Modernism, which he explored until the mid-1980s. He studied physics, then composition at the University of Western Australia, before moving to Sydney in 1975, where he worked as a freelance pianist and composer with a variety of theatre and dance companies, and ensembles.

Vine first came to prominence in Australia as a composer of music for dance, with 25 dance scores to his credit. In 1979 he co-founded the contemporary music ensemble "Flederman", which presented many of Vine's own works. From 1980 to 1982 he lectured in electronic music composition at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane.

His catalogue includes seven symphonies, eleven concertos, music for film, television and theatre, electronic music and numerous chamber works. Although primarily a composer of modern classical music, he has undertaken tasks as diverse as arranging the Australian National Anthem and writing music for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics closing ceremony.

Since 2000, Vine has been the Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia, the world's largest chamber music presenter. In 2005, he was awarded the Don Banks Music Award, the highest accolade the Australia Council for the Arts can confer on a musician. Since 2006, he has also been the Artistic Director of the Huntington Estate Music Festival.

In 2012, his second piano concerto was premiered by Piers Lane and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra with soprano Danielle de Niese premiered his solo cantata, The Tree of Man, after the 1955 novel by Patrick White.

In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Vine was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), "for distinguished service to the performing arts as a composer, conductor, academic and artistic director, and to the support and mentoring of emerging performers."

Vine is based in Sydney, where he works as a freelance composer. His trombone concerto Five Hallucinations was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in October 2016.

Works

Symphonic

• Symphony No. 1 MicroSymphony (1986)
• Symphony No. 2 (1988)
• Symphony No. 3 (1990)
• Symphony No. 4 (Symphony No. 4.2, 1992; revised 1998)
• Symphony No. 5 Percussion Symphony (1995)
• Symphony No. 6 Choral Symphony (1996)
• Symphony No. 7 Scenes from Daily Life (2008)

Concertante

• Percussion Concerto (1987)
• Concerto Grosso (violin, flute, oboe, horn and strings) (1989)
• Gaijin (koto, strings, pre-recorded electronics) (1994)
• Oboe Concerto (1996)
• Piano Concerto No. 1 (1997; commissioned by Sydney Symphony Orchestra)
• Pipe Dreams (concerto for flute and strings) (2003)
• Cello Concerto (2004)
• Violin Concerto (2011)
• Piano Concerto No. 2 (2012)
• Concerto for Orchestra (2014)
• Five Hallucinations (concerto for trombone and orchestra) (2016)

Other orchestral

• The Tree of Man (2012) (cantata for soprano and string orchestra)
• Gravity Road (2014) (a tone poem)

Chamber music

• String Quartet No. 1 (Knips Suite) (1979)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1984)
• String Quartet No. 3 (1994)
• String Quartet No. 4 (2004)
• String Quartet No. 5 (2007)
• String Quartet No. 6 (Child's Play) (2017)
• String Quintet (2009)
• Miniature I Peace (solo viola) (1973)
• Miniature II (viola duet) (1974)
• Miniature III (flute, trombone, piano, percussion) (1983)
• Miniature IV (flute, clarinet, cello, violin, viola, cello, piano) (1988)
• Sonata for flute and piano (1992)
• Inner World (solo cello with pre-recorded electronics) (1994)
• Fantasia for piano quintet (2013)
• The Village for piano trio (2014)

Piano

• Piano Sonata No. 1 (1990)
• Five Bagatelles (solo piano) (1994)
• Piano Sonata No. 2 (1997)
• Rash (piano with CD) (1997)
• Red Blues (solo piano) (1999)
• The Anne Landa Preludes (solo piano) (2006)
• Piano Sonata No. 3 (2007)
• Sonata for Piano Four Hands (2009)
• Toccatissimo (2011)

Dance

• 961 Ways to Nirvana (1977)
• Incident at Bull Creek (1977)
• Poppy (1978)
• Everymans Troth (1978)
• Scene Shift (1979)
• Kisses Remembered (1979)
• Knips Suite (1979)
• Missing Film (1980)
• Return (1980)
• Donna Maria Blues (1981)
• Colonial Sketches (1981)
• Daisy Bates (1982)
• Hate (1982)
• A Christmas Carol (1983)
• Prologue and Canzona (1986)
• Legend (1988)
• On The Edge (1989)
• Piano Sonata (1990)
• The Tempest (1991)
• Beauty and The Beast (1993)
• Mythologia (2000)
• The Silver Rose (2005)
• Tribe's Desire (2010)

Theatre

• The Dreamers (play – 1975)
• New Sky (mime by Judith Anderson – 1981)
• Signal Driver (play by Patrick White – 1982)
• Shepherd on the Rocks (play by Patrick White – 1987)
•  

• The Ham Funeral (play by Patrick White – 1989)
• The Master Builder (play by Ibsen – 1991)
• Night on Bald Mountain (play by Patrick White – 1996)
• A Hard God (play by Peter Kenna – 1997)

Film and television

•  (TV) (2000)The Potato Factory
• Marriage Acts (TV) (2000)
• White Fella's Dreaming (documentary) (1997)
• What Comes After Why? (short film) (1995)
• Urn (short film) (1995)
• The Battlers (TV) (1994)
• Bedevil (1993)
• You Can't Push the River (1993)
• The Dunstan Documentaries (TV) (1982)