Colin Brumby

Colin James Brumby (18 June 1933 – 3 January 2018) was an Australian composer and conductor.

Brumby was born in Melbourne and educated at the Glen Iris State School, Spring Road Central School, and Melbourne Boys' High School.

He was organist at St. Oswald's Glen Iris from 1950 to 1953.

In 1953 he was a finalist in the Australian Youth Aria competition, eventually winning the Lieder Award.

He studied at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, from which he graduated in 1957 with a diploma in education.

Before travelling to Europe in 1962 he taught in Queensland schools and was for a time the head of music at Kelvin Grove Teacher's College.

He went to Spain to study advanced composition with Philipp Jarnach, and to London to study with Alexander Goehr.

On his return to Australia, he joined the staff of the Music Department at the University of Queensland, and was based in Brisbane ever since.

In 1965 his work, Fibonacci Variations (1963) was selected for possible inclusion in the programmes of contemporary music, to be produced the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival.

Brumby was Musical Director of the Queensland Opera Company from 1968 to 1971.

While there, he conducted the Australian premieres of works such as Joseph Haydn's L'infedeltà delusa and Georges Bizet's Le docteur Miracle.

He also wrote a series of children's operettas, including The Wise Shoemaker (1968) Rita and Dita and the Pirate (1969), Rita and Dita in Toyland (1969) and The Prince Who Couldn't Laugh (1969).

These operettas toured throughout Queensland by the Queensland Opera Company, and were performed in 400 schools, reaching an audience of 75,000.

In 1969 he won the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award, composing the work A Ballade for St. Cecilia : Cantata for Chorus, Orchestra and Soloists.

He, along with Philip Bračanin, are two Brisbane-based composers who have attained an international reputation, beginning in the 1970s, and joined more recently by composers such as Gerard Brophy, Stephen Cronin, Robert Davidson, Kent Farbach, Stephen Leek, Peter Rankine and Nigel Sabin who have attained similar renown.

In 1971, he received his Doctorate of Music from the University of Melbourne.

In 1972 he returned overseas to study composition with Franco Evangelisti in Rome.

After his return to Australia, Musica Viva Australia commissioned Brumby to compose a work for the 1974 tour of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

This was The Phoenix and the Turtle for string orchestra and harpsichord.

He won a number of awards.

In 1981 Brumby was awarded an Advance Australia Award for services to music.

The Don Banks Music Award was established in 1984 to publicly honour a senior artist of high distinction who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Australia.

It was founded by the Australia Council in honour of Don Banks, Australian composer, performer and the first chair of its music board.

He has also won the Don Banks Fellowship (1990) and the APRA award for most performed Australasian serious work.

Brumby's music includes operas; concerti for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, piano, violin, viola, and guitar; two symphonies; orchestral suites and overtures; chamber works; sonatas for flute, clarinet and bassoon; incidental music for dramatic presentations; film and ballet scores; and songs.

His wife Jenny Dawson has contributed libretti for some of his operettas.

His personal papers and oral history are held at the State Library of Queensland.

He became Associate Professor with the University of Queensland, from which he retired in 1998.

Brumby died in Brisbane on 3 January 2018.