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Photo: Janice Westlake

Nigel Westlake's career in music has spanned more than three decades.

He studied the clarinet with his father, Donald Westlake (principal clarinettist, Sydney Symphony Orchestra 1961-1979) and subsequently left school early to pursue a performance career in music.

Westlake toured Australia and the world playing with ballet companies, a circus troupe, chamber music groups, fusion bands and orchestras to the cities of London, New York, Rome, Washington, Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, Amsterdam, Vancouver, Moscow, Hong Kong, Berlin, New Delhi and Singapore, to name but a few.

His interest in composition dates from the late 1970s when he formed a classical/jazz-rock/world-musi c fusion band to play original music. During this time he started to receive offers to compose for radio and circus. Commissions for TV and film soon followed.

In 1983 he furthered his studies of contemporary music in the Netherlands. From 1987 to 1992 he was a clarinettist with the Australia Ensemble resident at the University of New South Wales. In 1992 he joined guitarist John Williams's group Attacca as a performer and composer for tours of the United Kingdom and Australia. Since then he has given his primary attention to composition.

His film credits include the feature films Miss Potter, Babe, Babe - Pig in the City, Children of the Revolution, A Little Bit of Soul, The Nugget and the Imax films Antarctica, Imagine, The Edge and Solarmax. His romantic score for the Beatrix Potter biopic Miss Potter won 'Feature Film Score of the Year' and 'Best Soundtrack Album' at the 2007 APRA / AGSC Screen Music Awards.

His television credits include documentaries, telemovies, news themes and station idents.

Westlake's work has been widely performed and has earned numerous awards, including the Gold Medal at the New York International Radio Festival and numerous APRA and Screen Composer Guild awards for his film and concert music.

The feature film Babe won the Golden Globe Award in 1996 for 'best feature musical/comedy'.

His conducting debut was with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 1997.

His opus one, Omphalo Centric Lecture (1984) for percussion quartet has become one of the most frequently performed and recorded works in the percussion repertoire by groups in the USA, Japan, Europe and Australia.

In 2004 Nigel Westlake was awarded the HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University.

In 2008 he formed the Smugglers of Light Foundation in memory of his son Eli.

Nigel Westlake — current to July 2010