Mark Pollard

Australian composer Mark Clement Pollard has an eclectic compositional style utilising such diverse materials as, Improvisation, Jazz, Pop and the indigenous music’s of South East Asia.

His work has been released on nine compact discs including A Handful of Rain a collection of his ambient works. His music is broadcast and performed widely in Australia. Internationally his work has been included at many major festivals including the Warsaw Festival and the Tokyo Nova Festival. In 2003 he completed a Bass Clarinet Concerto for the brilliant Dutch performer Harry Sparnaay and in 2007 his Electric Guitar Concerto was premiered with critical acclaim at the final gala concert of the 2007 Darwin International Guitar Festival. His Beating the Rusty Nail for Violin and Piano was premiered at the 2008 Perth International Arts Festival and his Gunnai Dreaming was premiered at the 2009 Parliament of World Religions.

Site-specific elements feature in many of his works. This has included Sounding the earth for the Melbourne Museum, Sounding out Andy for the National Gallery of Victoria, the drumming dunnies for The Port Fairy Spring Festival, and with every step for the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

In 1983, he received one of the inaugural Jacobena Angliss Music Awards. In 1992 he received the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award and in 1993 The Spivokofsky Composition Prize.

In 2001 he received one of the inaugural VCA Teaching Excellence Awards, in 2006 a VCA Incredible Colleague Award for outstanding contribution to the VCA community and in 2009 a University of Melbourne Universitas21 teaching Fellowship. In 2008 Mark received the AMC /APRA Classical Music State Award for long-term contribution to the Advancement of Australian Music. In 2011 Mark is an invited keynote speaker at the Conference for Inter-disciplinary Musicology in Glasgow and will be guest composer in residence at Green College Vancouver where he will mentor a group of VCA composers in the Resonating Spaces project. Mark is Head of the VCA School of Contemporary Music at the University of Melbourne and a passionate supporter of the Australian Football League team the Western Bulldogs.