Melba Recordings

Roger Smalley (Piano)

A prominent and versatile figure in contemporary music, Roger Smalley was born near Manchester, England in 1943. At the Royal College of Music, London he studied piano with Antony Hopkins, composition with Peter Racine Fricker and John White, externally composition with Alexander Goehr, and subsequently Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne.

Roger’s compositions are performed and broadcast worldwide. Commissions include the BBC, ABC, West German Radio, Festival of Perth, London Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian String Quartet, Grainger Quartet, Fires of London, Flederman, Nova Ensemble, Seymour Group and Australia Ensemble.

As a young composer, he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for his orchestral work Gloria Tibi Trinitas. His first Piano Concerto, a BBC commission for European Music Year (1985), was the recommended work in the annual UNESCO Rostrum of Composers in 1987. Smalley's orchestral piece Birthday Tango (recently retitled Footwork) received the Australian Classical Music Award 2007 in the category 'Best Composition by an Australian Composer'.

As a pianist, Roger Smalley is widely recognised for his performance of contemporary and 18th–19th century works. Early in his career he was a prizewinner in the Gaudeamus competition for interpreters of contemporary music (1966) and won the Harriet Cohen award for contemporary music performance in 1968. In 1969 Roger and Tim Souster, formed the acclaimed live-electronic group, Intermodulation. Over the next six years Intermodulation toured widely in the UK, West Germany, Poland, France and Iran, repertoire including works by Souster and Smalley, but also the works of Cornelius Cardew, Terry Riley, Frederick Rzewski, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff and others.

Smalley's academic career is closely tied to his activities as composer and performer. In 1968 he was the first Artist-in-Residence at King's College Cambridge which he held for three years. In 1974, at the invitation of Sir Frank Callaway at The University of Western Australia, he became Composer in Residence for three months returning permanently in 1975. In 1996, he was appointed a Professorial Research Fellow.

In 1989, Roger became the first Artistic Director and conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra's 20th Century Ensemble, continuing until 2000.

In 1991 he received a Creative Development Award from the West Australian Department for the Arts and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 1994 he was awarded the Australia Council's prestigious Don Banks Fellowship ‘In Recognition of his Distinguished Contribution to Australian Music'. He received the Australian Government Centenary Medal in 2001 and was proclaimed a Western Australian Living Treasure in 2004.
Roger Smalley relocated from Perth to Sydney in 2007. He is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia and Honorary Research Associate at The University of Sydney. He continues to compose, perform and lecture and has written one of the two test pieces for the 2008 Sydney International Piano Competition.