Login

Enter your username and password

Jonathan Mustard has gained a reputation as one of Perth's most innovative composers, writing many works for mixed media, as well as more traditional instrumental and vocal pieces for dance, theatre, film, concert and stage.

He has been involved in several major dance productions with choreographers Chrissie Parrott, John McLaughlan (US), Douglas Dunn (US), and with dance graduates of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Mustard studied at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. He received the first Don Banks memorial prize for composition in 1981. In 2007, he was awarded a Master of Arts, Creative Arts by the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, in the field of music, dance and technology.

Mustard has worked closely with composer/performer Lindsay Vickery, who has premiered Mustard's work in Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands and the USA where he received an enthusiastic response to performances of mixed media works, the Robosax series.

Mustard is a regular performer with the theatre group Playback Theatre, first playing with the group in 1997 and holding the position of 'principal musician' since that time.

In 2002, he was commissioned by Barking Gecko Theatre for their Festival of Perth offering 'Sarena's Song', Chrissie Parrott and the Link Dance Company's season at the Playhouse Theatre in Perth and Dance House in Melbourne and for Link's tour of the Avignon Off festival for 2003.

In 2004, he was commissioned by TasDance to create the music for the full-length dance work Swimming the Luna Sea that was premiered in Launceston in April and toured Hobart and Melbourne to much critical acclaim.

Queensland University of Technology engaged Mustard and Parrott to premier their successful multimedia work Dis-Patch, which provided the basis for their invitation to the Monaco Dance Forum in 2004. Dis-Patch was voted by Dance Australia as the most memorable dance performance of 2004.

2005 saw the premiere of Parrott and Mustard's Baroqoda, a work for 12 dancers, five musicians, video and electroacoustic music, which toured successfully to the Tari Festival in Kuala Lumpur. The short film A Stone's Throw, for which Mustard wrote the music, was also premiered in 2005.

In 2005 and '06, Mustard performed his video interactive solo pieces at Club Zho, Spectrum Gallery and The Bakery in Perth. These are pieces in which the performer's playing on acoustic instruments, through a specially programmed computer system, affects the way in which video and sound is projected.

In 2006 he again collaborated with Parrott on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare/Mendelssohn) for the Western Australian Ballet, but this time as an animator, a new artistic role that he has been building for himself since 2004.

Also in 2006, Parrott and Mustard teamed up to create their multimedia installation, Metadance, at the Moores Building, Fremantle (WA). This installation later appeared at the Black Box space, Artrage Bakery in April 2007 for the Totally Huge New Music Festival to an extremely enthusiastic audience reception and substantial critical acclaim.

The Metadance installation was 'populated' with dancers for the Perth International Arts Festival in February 2008, selling out eight performances at Perth Institute for Contemporary Art's Performance Space. Metadance won outstanding achievement in Choreography, outstanding achievement in Design and Composition and outstanding achievement by a male dancer for Ausdance WA's 2008 dance awards.

Mustard was awarded a grant by ArtsWA to further develop and produce his repertoire of performer-interactive music-video work that was premiered in March 2009.

Jonathan Mustard — current to December 2010