Paul Stanhope
b. 1969
Australian
Summary
Through his prolific and varied body of work, Paul Stanhope has established himself as one of the key voices in modern Australian contemporary music. Stanhope combines his mastery of traditional Western and modernist techniques into a refreshingly unique and engaging personal style. Ranging anywhere from sardonic wit, to lyricism and rhythmic exuberance, his music has great variety and a very mature sense of narrative and humour.
Stanhope’s reputation as an excellent orchestral, solo, chamber and choral composer has been reinforced by his numerous awards such as the Charles Mackerras Scholarship, first place in the Toru Takemitsu Composition Prize, the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award, two Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships, the David H. Trible Memorial Symphonic Prize, and seven Art Music Work of the Year awards.
His work explores themes of reconciliation, particularly through major collaborations with Australian First Nations musicians and storytellers, as well as through a focus on ecological issues and humanist concerns.
Biography
Paul Stanhope is an award-winning Sydney-based composer. He has had prominent performances of his works in the UK, Europe, Asia as well as North and South America. After studies with Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney, Paul studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London. His work explores themes of reconciliation, particularly through major collaborations with Australian First Nations musicians and storytellers, as well as having a focus on ecological issues and humanist concerns.
Beauty of craft and the power of collective listening marks Paul’s work, recognised by the 2004 Toru Takemitsu Composition Prize and Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship 2013-14; five APRA AMCOS Art Music awards and the 2021 David H. Tribe memorial Symphonic Prize.
He was Musica Viva Australia’s Featured Composer in 2010, where he had national tour performances of his chamber and choral pieces for the Pavel Hass String Quartet, the Atos Trio, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge and the virtuosic violin piano duo of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien. His music has also featured at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in 2009 (including performances by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales), the City of London Festival in 2011, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in 2015 and the Melbourne International Chamber Music Festival in 2018.
Stanhope has composed a number of major works in recent years for large forces including Jandamarra: Sing for the Country a dramatic cantata based on the life of the Western Australian Indigenous resistance hero, premiered by the SSO in 2014 in collaboration with members of the Bunuba community from North Western Australia. This piece has been recognised as a “milestone in Australian Music” (The Australian).
In the last decade, he has composed concertos for piccolo, cello and trombone. His most recent orchestral work Ocean Planet was commissioned and premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in December 2022. In 2021, his Requiem was premiered by the Sydney Chamber Choir who have also recorded the piece, to be released in 2025. A new work for voice and strings, nyilamum – song cycles, was co-composed with dja-dja wurrung singer Dr Lou Bennett AM and premiered by Lou and the Australian String Quartet at the String Quartet Biennale in Amsterdam in February 2024. A new choral-orchestral cycle Mahasagar will be premiered by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 2025.
An Associate Professor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Stanhope is also the Artistic Chair of the Australia Ensemble at the University of New South Wales.