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Elliott Gyger was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1968, and began writing music at about the age of ten. His composition teachers have included Ross Edwards, Peter Sculthorpe, Bernard Rands and Mario Davidovsky. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Sydney (1990) and a PhD in Music from Harvard University (2002). His awards have included the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Fellowship, the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and commission grants from the Australia Council and the Fromm Foundation.

Elliott Gyger's music essays a synthesis of some of the bewildering diversity within Western art music of the late 20th and early 21st century. Grounded in the structural rigour of high modernism, it is concerned with the nexus between harmony and instrumental/vocal gesture. His instrumental works typically explore dramatic interactions between soloists and groups, whether in an orchestral or chamber context. His substantial vocal and choral output is similarly multilayered, with many pieces setting texts in multiple languages.

Among his orchestral and large ensemble works are concertos for E flat clarinet, celesta, tenor saxophone and prepared piano, as well as a Concerto for Orchestra premiered by WASO in 2022. His 'dialogue for orchestra' on air (2011) was awarded the Sydney Symphony 80^th Anniversary Composition Prize. His long-standing collaboration with Sydney ensemble Halcyon has resulted in seven vocal chamber works to date, two of which have won the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Award: giving voice (2012), for mezzo-soprano and five instruments, and Autobiochemistry (2019), for mezzo-soprano and cello. He has also collaborated with librettist Pierce Wilcox on two critically acclaimed works for Sydney Chamber Opera: Fly Away Peter (2015), after David Malouf, and Oscar and Lucinda (2019), adapted from Peter Carey.

Gyger is also active as a conductor, teacher and writer on new music. He was Assistant Professor of Music at Harvard from 2002 to 2007, and has taught at the University of Melbourne since 2008, where he is currently Professor of Music (Composition). He has been a tutor for young composer development programs with Halcyon, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and National Music Camp. He has written extensively on Australian composer Nigel Butterley, including a book on his music published by Wildbird Press in April 2015.

Elliott Gyger — current to December 2022