Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Image: Robert McIntyre  
© Photo by Rudi Lo

Drawing on nature, important causes, society and the personal, Robert McIntyre is an award-winning Australian composer whose music designs newfound space for moments, to achieve a multi-faceted sense of visibility. And this week, he is our guest on Beyond a Bio - the interview series that shines a spotlight on composers and creators, giving audiences an insight into their creative process, current work and the art music community in general.

McIntyre holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours) in Composition from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, holds a Juris Doctor from the Melbourne Law School, is a Wattle Fellow, practising Australian lawyer and a fully Represented Artist by the Australian Music Centre. Described as "strikingly contemporary" (Limelight), McIntyre works with the likes of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Flinders Quartet, Omega Ensemble, Syzygy Ensemble and more both locally and internationally. Notably, McIntyre received the 2023 Dorian Le Gallienne Composition Award for his climate justice song-cycle Our Duty to Care, and in 2025, with support from Creative Australia and Ian Potter Cultural Trust, represented Australia at the ISCM World New Music Days Festival in Portugal.

And now let's venture beyond a bio...

How would you describe your music to someone hearing it for the first time?
I would describe my music to a first-time listener as transportive and contemplative. My works draw on themes such as climate, the personal, and society - which tends to lend itself to a sense of atmosphere and/or energy.

How does a new work usually begin for you?
A new work almost always begins with improv at the piano, with me singing over playing it or playing flute over my piano recordings. When particularly planning for a certain work, like a commission, I also love to create a playlist of inspiration works, so I can enter a multi-faceted demo version of the sound-world I have in mind curated across many works, that I then wish to reference as I create my own.

What ideas and/or sounds are inspiring you right now?
Ideas-wise, climate and particularly climate justice is drawing my focus. Being a composer and a lawyer, I am incredibly keen to dive deeper into this area of my practice and use climate as common ground to merge music with justice.

Sounds-wise, I am actually quite obsessed with a lot of scottish and celtic sounds right now (being half-scottish helps) - particularly fiddle/violin playing double stops alone or with piano or drones or more strings! There is such a rawness to the sound and the harmony while so emotionally honest in its genre (whether longing or complete joy). Into the nitty gritty, deeply exploring anything that slightly departs from the norm colour in different contexts is something constantly inspiring me, e.g., timbral trills and alternate fingerings on woodwinds or sul pont and tasto on strings.

Can you tell us about a recent project or work?
A recent project and work of mine is Our Duty to Care - my climate-justice song cycle for soprano and piano trio, which was presented in a curation of the same name at Melbourne Recital Centre last August 2025. This sold-out curation by Changing Wilds Ensemble, which I co-lead with icon pianist and close collaborator Georgina Lewis, was so meaningful to put on, building on two years of past momentum highlighting themes of advocacy, empathy, loss, hope, sustainability and more. We centred it around my song cycle (with text by Savanna Wegman), which is an extra-musical manifestation of the groundbreaking environmental law case Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560 - bringing often inaccessible legal concepts and moments straight from the courts to the concert hall. This work and Changing Wilds are excitingly returning to MRC later this November 10th 2026 in the Salon with a brand new curation of works, shifting emphasis now to the concept of time, urgency and speculative futures, and how these interact with our climate.

Watch Our Duty to Care performed by Changing Wilds Ensemble at roberttmcintyre.com/our-duty-to-care

What do you hope listeners experience in your music?
I hope my listeners experience a journey, whether it is one echoed and influenced from my program note, or one that is completely their own - hopefully in either scenario, coming out of the space with an impact of something they were searching for, or didn't know they needed.

Where/how do you work best?
Such a good question!! Honestly anywhere with my sound-cancelling headphones. I love to compose on a train ride, in a cafe, in a park on the grass, at home with double monitors, or right at the piano. Flowstate is a curious and unpredictable experience, so I've found carrying my comp journal, pencil, laptop and headphones with me at all times possible leads me to work best in intuitive spaces.

What's something people might not expect about your creative process?
Musically, when a work is progressing in Sibelius - I make whatever line is appropriately possible to play on the flute and then play with the playback over and over. There is something about performing more inside the work while it is built that really allows me to get a look into its line, contour and pacing which I find the flute allows me to uniquely access.

Image: Robert McIntyre

If you had to name one Australian work everyone should hear, what would it be?
This is a ridiculously hard question, in that there are way too many. However, one Australian work I will always come back to is Katy Abbott's Hidden Thoughts I: Do I Matter?. In Katy's own words, this work asks you to consider what confines you - and I find the work so powerfully human. I firmly believe it is a must-listen.

What excites you about Australian art music right now?
I am meeting more and more Australian art music creators who are crossing disciplines and collaborating across mediums and industries. It is so exciting to see this embracing and how we are then both diversifying our projects and the audiences we reach as a result of it.

What's next for you?
Some really exciting premieres and projects are upcoming:

• Omega Ensemble 2026 CoLAB New Now concert at ACO on the Pier 14 August 2026: with the premiere of my new work Solastalgia alongside three other incredible new works by my CoLAB colleagues Jessie Leov, Tom Misson and Beth Roche
• Changing Wilds Ensemble 85 seconds to midnight curation at Melbourne Recital Centre on 10 November 2026, including a performance of Our Duty to Care and premiere of my new piano trio 85 seconds to midnight - alongside a panel discussion with CLIMARTE, the Wattle Fellowship and more in the Primrose Potter Salon (link)
• Flinders Quartet premieres my new string quartet Bushfire Skies (with string orchestra arrangements) with Resonance String Orchestra at Castlemaine Town Hall on 22 November 2026 - commissioned by Flinders Quartet with support from FQ Syndicate #8 and the Dorian Le Gallienne Composition Award.

I have a couple other commissions at the moment bubbling away to be announced at a later date.

I am also soon publishing my legal academic paper with Brad Jessup this year called 'Climate discourses and the art of storytelling: From the courts to the concert hall', exploring storytelling in key climate negligence cases and how the arts can play a vital role in supplementing the law where its litigious processes hits its own limits. This paper was recently presented in May 2026 at NYU London during MOTH Conference Festival of Ideas, and self-references and analyses my composition Our Duty to Care in its thesis.