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Helen Gifford was born in Hawthorn in 1935. She was educated at Tintern Junior School and Melbourne Girls Grammar. A Commonwealth Scholarship was obtained for the music degree course at Melbourne University Conservatorium, where she studied piano with Roy Shepherd and harmony with Dorian Le Gallienne, gaining her Bachelor of Music in 1958.

Phantasma (1963), for string orchestra, was chosen for submission to the ISCM Festival at Copenhagen. On receiving the First Commission of the Dorian Le Gallienne Award in 1965 she wrote a string quartet that was performed at the 1966 Adelaide Festival. Chimaera (1967), and Imperium (1969), both for large orchestra, were recorded by the ABC on their in-house LPs.

Between 1970 and 1982 Gifford received regular commissions to write music for Melbourne Theatre Company productions. Directors included Rick Billinghurst, Tyrone Guthrie (UK), Frank Hauser (UK), Ray Lawler, Bruce Myles, David Myles, Mick Rodger (UK), John Sumner, and Joachim Tenschert (Berliner Ensemble), for plays by Brecht, Congreve, Shaffer, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Stoppard and Tourneur.

In 1973 she was awarded a Senior Composer's Fellowship, and in 1974 was appointed Composer-in Residence to the Australian opera. Two substantial music-theatre works were written on grants from the Music Board of the Australia Council: Regarding Faustus (1983), and Iphigenia in Exile (1985). In 1993 she received a grant from the Edward H. Green Foundation, and in 1995 wrote a work for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, Point of Ignition, while on a Composer Fellowship from the Australia Council. In 1996 she was awarded Doctor of Letters (honoris Causa) by Monash University.

In 1999 ABC Classic FM commissioned the piano piece as foretold to Khayyám, for Michael Kieran Harvey, and the same year she completed a 50-minute work for choir and instruments Choral Scenes: the Western Front, World War I, commissioned by Astra, which was a setting of verse from that time in English, French and German.

Recent works include: Spell Against Sorrow (2003), which makes use of extended vocal techniques. This work was written in tribute to the musicians Deborah Kayser and Geoffrey Morris. A setting of 3 poems by Kathleen Raine: Spell Against Sorrow, Statues, and On a Deserted Shore, the work was first performed in 205 by new music ensemble Astra.

Paganini (2006), for piano solo was written for Sally Mays, who gave the first performance in October 2006. This piece is yet another offering to the large collection of settings and adaptations of Paganini's 24 Caprices for solo violin.

Gifford's Menin Gate (2005) - a solo piano work written for pianist Michael Harvey - won her the 2006 State Award for Victoria at the Classical Music Awards this year for Best Composition by an Australian Composer.

A heightened use of percussive sounds and extended pitch textures characterises the music of Helen Gifford, especially noticeable in Music for the Adonia (1993), commissioned by the Elision Ensemble.

Biography provided by the composer — current to December 2006