Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Ross Edwards is one of Australia's best-known composers, both nationally and internationally. His music has found a welcome audience in Europe and the USA, as well as in Australian concert halls. The Kit is designed to accompany the ABC Classics CD of the same name, and contains introductory information about the composition of each work, a listening guide, and listening, score-reading and composition activities that will help students to explore and understand the compositional style and technique of Ross Edwards. There are also two classroom arrangements of music from the CD (complete with transposed parts).

The author, Philip Cooney, is a teacher with thirty years experience. His study of the music of Ross Edwards has identified the major developments in the composer's music in the last fifteen years. Professor Anne Boyd described this study as "a valuable contribution to Australian musical scholarship". Another well-known writer on Australian music, Dr Linda Kouvaras, said that Philip's research "made a very important and valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarship which illuminates the compositional processes and recent developments of Ross Edwards." Philip is a regular contributor to the education resources produced by the Sydney Symphony and Symphony Australia. This has included material and learning activities on Australian composers such as Brett Dean, Ross Edwards, Elena Kats-Chernin, Graeme Koehne, Carl Vine and Nigel Westlake.