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Australian composer Mark Clement Pollard has an eclectic compositional style utilising such diverse materials as improvisation, jazz, pop and the indigenous musics of South-East Asia.

Pollard has received over sixty commissions, including commissions from the majority of Australia's acclaimed ensembles and soloists. His work has been released on nine compact discs, including a collection of his ambient works titled A Handful of Rain. His music is broadcast and performed widely in Australia, and major performances include the premiere of his Double Guitar Concerto The Distance to the Sun at the 1999 Darwin International Guitar Festival. This performance involved the conductor arriving by speedboat to conduct an orchestra floating on Lake Bennet.

Pollard has had several feature concerts and programs of his music broadcast on ABC FM. His work has been included in many major international festivals, including the Warsaw Festival, the Tokyo Nova Festival, the Liverpool Festival and the Under Capricorn Festival (USA). In 2003 he completed a bass clarinet concerto for the brilliant Dutch performer Harry Sparnaay, and, in 2005, a piano sonata The 47th Theorem for the virtuoso pianist Michael Kieran Harvey, in 2009 Gunnai Dreaming for the Lavalla School Choir Traralgon, and in 2010 The Heavenly Muzak Machine for SPEAK percussion

Site-specific elements feature in many of Pollard's collaborative works. These have included sounding out the earth for the Melbourne Museum, all fired up for the Pumping Station at Scienceworks, sounding out Andy for the National Gallery of Victoria, the drumming dunnies for the Port Fairy Spring Festival, with every step for the Royal Melbourne Hospital and sculpture interactions as part of the John Davis exhibition at the Robert Lindsay Gallery.

In 1983 Pollard received one of the inaugural Jacobena Angliss Music Awards. In 1984, his orchestral work Chamber Symphony received first place in the National-Canberra Orchestral Competition and in the same year he received a fellowship for the National Orchestral Composers' School. In 1992 he received the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award and, in 1993, the Spivokofsky Composition Prize. In 2002 he was a semifinalist in the prestigious Raymond and Beverly Sackler Composition Prize at the University of Connecticut, and has been a finalist in many major competitions including the Tokyo Music Today Competition. In 2008 Mark received the Classic Music State Award for his long-term contribution to the advancement of Australian music in Victoria.

Mark Pollard is a passionate supporter of the Western Bulldogs, an Australian Football League team. He is currently Associate Professor (Composition) at the School of Music, the Faculty of the VCA and Music, the University of Melbourne.

Mark Pollard — current to July 2010