Login

Enter your username and password

Photo: Fiora Sacco

Born in the United States, Mary Mageau first arrived in Australia in 1974 as a guest music lecturer. She is married to architect Ken White, lives in Queensland and now holds Australian/American citizenship. Mageau studied composition at Chicago's DePaul University gaining a BMus with Honours. She graduated Pi Kappa Lambda from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an MMus degree in composition. In 1970 she also participated in the Tanglewood Composers' Fellowship Program.

Mageau's catalogue includes works for symphony and string orchestra, chorus, ballet, theatre, solo instruments, various chamber ensembles and voice. She has received international awards, including awards in the Louis Moreau Gottschalk International Composer's Competition (silver medal), the 1994 Alienor Harpsichord Concerto Competition for Composers, as well as an ASCAP Standard Award, granted annually since 1981. In 1990, her Triple Concerto (for piano trio and orchestra) was highly commended by the Vienna Modern Masters First Recording Award and released in VMM's 'Music From Six Continents' CD Series.

Mageau has received commissions from Musica Viva, the Queensland Philharmonic and the ABC, and several Australia Council Composer Commission Grants. In 1996 An Early Autumn's Dreaming was released on a video entitled Music - A European Experience, performed by the SBS-TV Youth Orchestra. In addition, she has collaborated with international musicians, among them violinist Janet Packer and harpsichordists Audley Green and Igor Kipnis.

In Australia, Mageau has composed works for the Queensland and Strathfield Orchestras, the Camerata of St Johns, the Darling Downs Piano Trio, Perihelion, Carisma and the Southern Cross Soloists. Through Musica Viva's commissioning program, Italy's Trio di Milano and Hungary's Auer String Quartet have performed Mageau's chamber music. Many international orchestras have also played and recorded her works. These include the Hartford, Duluth, Des Moines and Minnesota Orchestras in the USA and Europe's Slovak and Polish Radio Symphony Orchestras. Her music is published in Australia and the United States, has been released on 16 CDs.

Mageau enjoys literary writing and is the author of two spiritual books published by Boolarong Press. She frequently teaches meditation classes and regularly contributes articles to new age magazines. Through her exploration of Asian culture, Mageau practices Ikebana, the Japanese fine art of floral arranging. She also writes poetry in the Japanese literary forms of Haiku, Senryu, Tanka and Haibun. Her poetry is published in the United States by Red Moon Press and the MET Press, and in Canadian and Australian literary journals.

Mageau writes: 'Through my music I always seek to communicate something fresh, new and expressive to the performer/s and listening public. Music must communicate - it must say something of meaning that will engage each listener in a satisfying artistic journey'

Mary Mageau — current to September 2009