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Photo: Leonie Lane

Michael Hannan (b. Newcastle, NSW, on November 19, 1949) is a composer, keyboard performer and music researcher, based in Geelong, Victoria. He studied musicology at the University of Sydney and was awarded a PhD in 1979. In 1980 he undertook postgraduate studies in composition with Peter Sculthorpe, with whom he had also worked as composition assistant from 1969 to1971, and later as a composition collaborator on media and theatre music projects.

In 1983, Hannan received a Fulbright Postdoctoral Award which enabled him to work for a year in the Program in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While at UCLA Hannan also studied composition with Elaine Barkin. Other composers with whom Hannan has studied include David Ahern, Ton de Leeuw, Frank Denyer, and José Maceda.

Hannan has written over one hundred and eighty works for concert hall, stage and screen, including electro-acoustic works and works involving improvisation. Most of his notated works have been published by Wirripang. He has received commissions from Lyndon Terracini, The Seymour Group (x3), NSW Department of Education, Sally Mays, Kalimna Trio, and Nicholas Hewett.

Hannan's Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project grant, "Regional performing arts: theory, practice and policy" (2003), also supported his composition of a large-scale music theatre production, The Flood, produced by Northern Rivers Performing Arts in 2004.

The main inspirations for Hannan's work are the sounds of nature, particularly birdcalls, and he has written many pieces based on transcriptions he has made of Australian birdsongs, particularly songs of the Pied Butcherbird.

His works and performances can be heard on commercial labels, including Tall Poppies Records, Move Records, MBS Records, Wirripang Media, and Vox Australis.

In 2022, Hannan won a Leslie Barklamb Flute Composition Competition prize; and, in 2024, the Monash University First Prize of the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference Piano Composition Competition. His solo piano work, Heavenly Bodies was selected and performed at the 37th ACL Festival of Japan in Kawasaki.

Hannan was Professor of Music at Southern Cross University (SCU) from 2006 to 2014. He was a pioneer of contemporary popular music education at SCU, beginning in the mid-1980s, He is author of Peter Sculthorpe: His Music and Ideas (UQ Press, 1982), The Australian Guide to Careers in Music (UNSW Press, 2003) and The Music of Richard Meale (Wildbird Music, 2014), as well as around two hundred articles, book chapters and critical reviews on a wide range of topics.

Email: michaelhannan26@gmail.com

Michael Hannan — current to August 2025