I have been writing songs for the best part of 25 years, both for my own creative endeavours and also as bespoke compositions commissioned for various kinds of projects. My music is mainly acoustic and vocal and can incorporate recorded sounds, loops and field recordings. I’m inspired to write about places and times somewhat overlooked by the daily insistence of “progress”, Songs also sometimes come from undefinable, intangible places. If I look out of the corner of my eye there can often be a song lurking. Of late, my favourite place to write has been stuck in traffic jams on Cleveland Street, Sydney, on various trips to and from other places. As well as songs that just present themselves, I also write for my own and others’ special projects including for Local Councils, choirs and special events. I have included on this page a Seniors’ Soundscape I was commissioned to create in 2016 by three Local Councils in Southern Sydney.

Songs

Let There Be Peace, 2015.

Unaccompanied SATB score freely available for learning, adapting and performing.

Translated into Portuguese by Andrea Pinto, and Tetum, in 2019 and performed by the Combined Union Choirs in Dili Square to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Timor L’Este’s independence.

Recorded here by Ecopella on Green Footprints.

Rumours of Summer, 2011

Album of original songs recorded in 2011.

Songs for 1917: Strike

Songs written with PP Cranney for the show 1917:Strike which celebrated one hundred years since the 1917 strike in Australia, including To The Mortuary Station (Ballad of Merv Flanagan) which I performed at the unveiling of the plaque to the Late Merv Flanagan in Camperdown and Railway Refreshment Rooms based on a newspaper article about the RRR women.

Randwick Songs

Currently composing a song cycle written around the early history of white settlement of what is now the City of Randwick. More information can be found here. Supported by the City of Randwick through its Creative Communities grants.

Songs that are Settings of Poems

Eroded Hills - Judith Wright

Silence is the Rock - Judith Wright

for SATB choir and waterphone. Commissioned by the inaugural Moorambilla Festival in 2006.

Son of Mine - Oodjeroo Nunuccal

Second Class Wait Here - Henry Lawson

Performed here by the 1917:Strike band.

Recorded here by Chloë and Jason Roweth on The Soul of a Poet.

Recorded here by Christine Wheeler and Friends on Rain on the Mountain.

Printed in The Songs of Henry Lawson Song Book, available from the NSW Folk Federation

Collaborations

Wrote with award-winning songwriter Karen Law “Elizabeth”, a song about Elizabeth Batt, known as the wife od James Cook, and also “Ride Like the Wind Mary-Ann” about bushranger Mary-Ann Bugg.

Three songs in 2015 with Dyan Summers, Paredarerme (Tas) Elder: Menaye, Teyenebe and Pugguleena Pareebara. These songs in Language are shared with permission. A presentation on the culture and singing of these songs was recored by the National Library of Australia in 2xxx at the Cygnet Folk Festival, Tasmania.

Regular collaborations with Greg White. I write the songs and he arranges them for voice and one or two guitars, or guitar, cello and voice. Forthcoming album. Demos. Poor Lonely Bird, Goodbye, My Song, and Hungry Mile.