Photo © Jason Catlett

Paul Stanhope is a Sydney-based composer, conductor and educator. His compositions have had prominent performances in the UK, Europe, Asia as well as North and South America. After studies with Andrew Ford, Andrew Schultz and Peter Sculthorpe in Australia, Paul was awarded the Charles Mackerras Scholarship which enabled him to study at the Guildhall School of Music in London in 2000.

In May 2004 Paul’s international standing was confirmed when he was awarded first place in the prestigious Toru Takemitsu Composition Prize. Since then, he has been awarded five APRA/Australian Music Centre Art awards in Instrumental, Orchestral, Choral and Vocal music categories and also received the David H. Tribe memorial Symphonic Prize in 2021. Paul was also the first composer to receive a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2013 and 2014.

In 2010 Paul was Musica Viva Australia’s featured composer, receiving nation-wide performances by the Pavel Haas Quartet, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Atos Piano Trio from Berlin. Paul’s music has also been featured at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (Wales) in 2009, The City of London Festival in 2011 and at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in 2016. In 2018 a new Piano Trio ‘Pulses’ was premiered by eight competing trios from around the world as part of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.

2014 saw the premiere of Jandamarra: Sing for the Country, a music-drama based on the life of the Western Australian Indigenous resistance hero in collaboration with librettist Steve Hawke and members of the Bunuba nation in North Western Australia. Written for large choral and orchestral forces as well as singers, actors and dancers from the Bunuba Community, it was premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Gondwana Choirs and has since had a return performance in October 2019, presented by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Jandamarra has been recognized as a ‘milestone in Australian composition’ (The Australian).

Paul’s Piccolo Concerto was featured in performances by the Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras in 2013 and was released on an ABC Classics recording the following year. This work was followed by a Cello Concerto ‘Dawn and Darkness’ composed in 2016 for the Sydney Symphony and an award-winning Trombone Concerto premiered by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 2017. Other recent projects include a string orchestra work Giving Ground premiered by the Philharmonia Baroque orchestra in San Fransisco and Spin Dances – a set of sardonic miniatures for chamber orchestra, premiered by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2022.

In 2021, Paul’s Requiem, written for Sydney Chamber Choir, was premiered to great acclaim with the Sydney Morning Herald describing it as a ‘major contribution to Australian choral music’. It was subsequently awarded ‘Choral Work of the Year’ in the 2022 APRA/Australian Music Centre Art Awards.

Paul Stanhope is an Associate Professor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney where he is also Director of the SCM Chamber Choir. He is also Artistic Chair of the Australia Ensemble, University of New South Wales and a board member of The Song Company.

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