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Nicholas Vines (b.1976, Sydney) is a young Australian composer based in the US. His works have been performed in Australia, the US, the UK and Europe by such interpreters as Alarm Will Sound, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ChamberMade Opera, the Callithumpian Consort, Ensemble Offspring, the Schola Cantorum Gedanesis Chamber Choir, White Rabbit, the BT Scottish Ensemble, the Australian Voices, Eliot Gattegno and Liwei Qin. He has received commissions from numerous ensembles and institutions, such as Faber Music, the Callithumpian Consort, Primary Duo, Prana Duo, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Firebird Ensemble, the Tait Memorial Trust, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, 2MBS FM Radio (Sydney) and Ars Musica Australis.

Recognition for Vines's work includes the 1996 Bernard Shore Composition Award (UK) for The Underside Revealed (viola and strings), the 1998 Australian Voices Young Composer Award for the choral work The Lion's Country, 2nd prize in the Musica Sacra 2005 International Composers Competition (Poland) for Ave Generosa (for SSAATTBB choir), and an honourable mention in the 2006 Salvatore Martirano Memorial International Composition Competition (USA) for Dolmen of New Albion (for ten players). More recently, he was chosen as a semi-finalist in the 2009 Vista Competition, which will involve a performance by Opera Vista (Houston) of excerpts from The Sepulchre of Love. The Australian Music Centre has selected his works as official submissions to the ISCM World Music Days for two years running (2006, 2007), and he has been invited to coordinate the composition component of New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The inaugural season of Vines's opera, The Hive, which explores the life and death of the Bloomsbury poet, Rupert Brooke, was produced by ChamberMade Opera (Melbourne) in August-September 2006. It consequently won Best Opera Production in the 2006 Green Room Awards, having received five nominations, and a 2007 Helpmann Award for Best Opera Direction. Recent renditions of Vines's compositions include Dies Irae by the Sydney Philharmonia Choir and Orchestra in the Sydney Opera House, The Butcher of Brisbane by Callithumpian Consort (Boston), several performances of My Little Schmetterling by Boston-based Prana Duo, Terraformation by pianist Yukiko Takagi (Boston), Three Scenes from Suburbia by the Sydney Symphony Sinfonia, and a newly commissioned piece, Torrid Nature Scene, by contemporary music group Firebird Ensemble (NYC/Boston). Works for Vienna-based Duo Young Music, Guerilla Opera (Boston) and percussionist Scott Deal are his next undertakings.

Vines studied at the University of Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards and Anne Boyd, receiving a BMus with 1st Class Honours and the University Medal, and an MMus with High Distinction. During the latter, he was supported by the A.E. and F.A.Q. Stephens Scholarship, which is bestowed on one student attending the University for the duration of postgraduate study. He completed the AM/PhD program in composition at Harvard University in 2007, having been awarded the Sir Robert Gordon Menzies Scholarship for 2001-2002, as well as various Harvard fellowships, including a GSAS Dissertation Completion Grant (2006). During his time there, he worked with Bernard Rands, Mario Davidovsky, Lee Hyla, Judith Weir, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Magnus Lindberg, Julian Anderson and Michael Finnissy.

Presently a Lecturer on Music at Harvard University, Vines has also worked in various capacities at Wellesley College, the University of Sydney and the Australian International Conservatorium. He is regularly involved in choirs and choral productions as a bass-baritone and countertenor, and also periodically takes on operatic roles, including the Kommissar in the 2007 Lowell House Opera staging of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and the Ferryman in an upcoming Harvard College production of Curlew River by Benjamin Britten.

Biography provided by the composer — current to April 2009