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Photo: Melbourne Headshot Company

Katy Abbott has produced a range of orchestra, chamber and vocal music, including her symphony Souls of Fire (2004). Her work has been performed recently by ensembles such as the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Flinders Quartet, Halcyon, The Song Company, the Australian Chamber Ensemble, Craig Hultgren (US) and Collision Theory. She has completed a range of commissions  over recent years, including It Is Just The Heart for the Flinders Quartet and Aspects of Dreaming for the Australian Voices and residencies with Orchestras Australia, SYO and University of Tasmania. Her music also has appeared in festivals such as Perth and Melbourne International Festivals, Port Fairy Spring Festival and the International Alliance of Women in Music (IAWM) conference in Beijing.

Numerous ensembles and orchestras, such as Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, have undertaken recordings of her work. Her music has been performed in China, USA, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Italy and Hungary. Katy Abbott has won various prizes and awards including the Dorian Le Gallienne Prize (2001) and the 2008 Lyrebird Commission.

Her music has been broadly described as contemporary classical, drawing influences from a range of sources, including text from ancient Chinese poets to contemporary texts from unusual places.  Abbott holds a PhD in Composition from University of Melbourne, where she studied with Brenton Broadstock and Linda Kouvaras, and has lectured and taught at tertiary level in composition, orchestration and related music subjects.

Her orchestral piece, Carmen Vitae: Song of Life is published online by ‘In The Chair’, an interactive music performance site where students can access their performance part and play along side the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Her music is published by ReedMusic and Morton Music and she holds an artist space at the beautiful Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne.

2008 saw the release of a recording of her first symphony, Souls of Fire by the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and Abbott completed commissions for the Lyre Bird Society The Empty Quarter, a new work for symphonic winds, Jumeirah Jane and The Peasant Prince for narrator and orchestra for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra which was premiered with great success.

Abbott lives in Melbourne with her husband and three young boys, after recently returning from  Malaysia and Dubai where they lived for a time.

Biography provided by the composer — current to April 2009