Full biography
Short biography

New! High resolution
photo downloads

Full biography

Andrew Ford is a composer, writer and broadcaster. His music has been played in many parts of the world and featured at international festivals as far-flung as Houston and Huddersfield, Salzburg and Seoul.

Andrew Ford's music has been performed by the likes of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Brodsky Quartet, the dèdalo Ensemble (Brescia), the Da Capo Chamber Players (New York), Duo Stump-Linshalm (Vienna), Ensamble 3 (Mexico City), Het Trio (Amsterdam), the London Sinfonietta, the New Juilliard Ensemble (New York), the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and all Australia's major orchestras and ensembles. His works have been conducted by Oliver Knussen, Reinbert de Leeuw, James MacMillan, Brett Dean and Jeffrey Tate, his piano pieces played by Peter Donohoe, Lisa Moore, Ananda Sukarlan, Michael Kieran Harvey and Gerard Willems, and his songs sung by Yvonne Kenny, Sarah Leonard, Merlyn Quaife and Gerald English. English, indeed, has sung a dozen works by Ford, most notably the music-theatre piece, Night and Dreams: the death of Sigmund Freud (words by Margaret Morgan), which he premiered at the 2000 Adelaide Festival, before taking it on to the Sydney and Melbourne festivals in 2001.

Born in Liverpool, England, in 1957, Ford spent much of his childhood listening to the Beatles and other Sixties pop groups. A complete failure at piano lessons, he began to compose his own music as a teenager while at St Olave's School in Kent, where his family had moved in 1967. In 1975, he went to the University of Lancaster where he studied composition with Edward Cowie and John Buller and had a formative meeting with Sir Michael Tippett who persuaded him to forget about musical systems and trust his instincts as a composer.

After graduating with honours in 1978, Ford was appointed Fellow in Music at the University of Bradford where he conducted the choir and orchestra in repertoire ranging from Bach to Birtwistle, and ran a concert series to which he welcomed a wide range of musicians including Janet Baker, Frans Brüggen, Ravi Shankar and Carla Bley. In 1983, he moved to Australia to join the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, teaching composition, but also lecturing on a variety of music from Renaissance polyphony to punk. While on the faculty, he completed his Doctorate, writing a thesis on the topic of musical word setting. Between 1992 and 1994, Ford took leave from the university in order to be composer in residence with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. In 1995, Ford retired from academe and ever since has presented The Music Show each Saturday morning on ABC Radio National.

Ford was the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Fellow (1998–2000). During this period he completed many new pieces and began work on The Waltz Book, to a commission from the pianist Ian Munro. Consisting of 60 minute-long waltzes, the project took more than four years to complete, and has been widely played (in whole and part) since its premiere in 2003. At the end of 2004, Ford received a two-year Fellowship from the Music Board of the Australia Council, allowing him to work on a range of pieces. These included Scenes from Bruegel, premiered in New York in 2006 by the New Juilliard Ensemble conducted by Joel Sachs, and the song cycle Domestic Advice for soprano Jane Edwards. He also composed his first Symphony for the Australian National Academy of Music, conducted there by Artistic Director Brett Dean in November 2008. Other recent works include Headlong, commissioned by the Sydney Symphony for the orchestra’s 75th anniversary season in 2007, Thin Air, written for the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2008 and the opera Rembrandt's Wife, to a libretto by Sue Smith, premiered by Victorian Opera in April 2009. Ford was Resident Composer at the Australian National Academy of Music in 2009.

Andrew Ford has won several prizes. They include the Yorkshire Arts Composers Award which he won jointly with Mark-Anthony Turnage in 1982 (for Portraits), the Sydney Spring Festival award for most original new work of the 1998 festival (for Tattoo) and the 2002 Jean Bogan Prize (for The Waltz Book). In 2004, his song cycle Learning to Howl received both the AMC award for the best composition by an Australian composer and the prestigious Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize. Tales of the Supernatural was named APRA vocal work of the year in 2005. The radiophonic version of his choral piece, Elegy in a Country Graveyard, was shortlisted for the 2007 Prix Italia.

Ford has also won prizes for his writing about music, most notably the Geraldine Pascall Prize for critical writing in 1998. He has published five books and written and presented three acclaimed radio series, Illegal Harmonies (1997), Dots on the Landscape - an oral history of Australian music (2001) and Music and Fashion (2005). Dots on the Landscape was also shortlisted for the Prix Italia and won an Australian Music Centre Award in 2002.

(January 2010)

Short biography

Andrew Ford is a composer, writer and broadcaster, and has won awards in all three capacities, including the prestigious Paul Lowin Prize for his song cycle, Learning to Howl. His music has been played throughout Australia and in more than 40 countries around the world. He was composer-in-residence with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (1992–94), held the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composer Fellowship (1998–2000) and was awarded a two-year fellowship by the Music Board of the Australia Council (2005–2006). In 2009, he was Resident Composer at the Australian National Academy of Music.

Beyond composing, Ford has been an academic in the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong (1983–95). He has written widely on all manner of music and published five books. He wrote, presented and co-produced the ABC radio series Illegal Harmonies, Dots on the Landscape and Music and Fashion. Since 1995, he has presented The Music Show each Saturday morning on ABC Radio National.

(January 2010)

High resolution photos

The two photographs featured on this page are available as high resolution versions from the links below. The photographs can be used free of charge in non-commercial contexts.

The photographs must be credited as follows: Photo © Jim Rolon.

For bigger versions and more promotional photographs, please contact Andrew Ford.

Colour photo screen resolution 600 x 604 pixels (72 pixels/inch) 297 KB
Colour photo print resolution, medium size 6.77 cm x 6.82 cm (300 pixels/inch) 975 KB
Colour photo print resolution, big size 12 x 12.7 cm (300 pixels/inch) - 3.27 MB

Black and white screen resolution 600 x 598 pixels (72 pixels/inch) 232 KB
Black and white print resolution medium size 6.77 cm x 6.75 cm (300 pixels/inch) 640 KB
Black and white print resolution big size 12.7 cm x 12.65 cm (300 pixels/inch) 1.96 MB

Black and white head shot print resolution 5.93 cm x 5.91 cm (300 pixels/inch) 291 KB