To commission a piece of music from Andrew Ford you can either contact the composer directly or through his publisher, Wise Music Australia. Most composers charge by the minute (of music, not of the composer’s time!), the amount dependant on the medium. For instance, a minute of music for large orchestra will cost more than […]
General news
Andrew Ford signs to Wise Music
Wise Music G. Schirmer Australia and Andrew Ford have signed a publishing agreement, initially for approximately thirty titles in all genres. These include the operas, Rembrandt’s Wife and Peter Pan, orchestral works including The Meaning of Trees, and a range of chamber, instrumental, vocal and choral music. Photo: Andrew Ford and Jane English, managing director […]
Help to commission Six Medieval Women
To make a tax-free donation to the Melbourne Women’s Choir commission fund see below. Six Medieval Women, for women’s voices and bells, draws on words by Hildegard of Bingen, Trota of Salerno, Anna of Rome (aka Anna the Hebrew), the Wife of Bath, Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. The half-hour piece is for Faye […]
I Sing the Birth
In December 2024, I Sing the Birth had its first performances in Perth, Canberra and Antwerp by three of its four commissioners. Hugh Lydon’s Aquinas College Schola Cantorum gave the actual premiere with Aaron Powell (electric guitar) and two weeks later Luminescence Children’s Choir sang the piece under AJ America with Theo Carbo. A week […]
Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award to Andrew Ford
The 2020 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards have been announced, with Andrew Ford among recipients. As a nod to the special circumstances of the pandemic year, the prize money was distributed equally between eight artists/groups, instead of awarding the usual three prizes (the Group Award, the Individual Award and the Facilitator’s Prize). The following all took […]
The Music Show turns 30
ABC Radio National’s long running weekend program, The Music Show, celebrated its 30th anniversary in February 2021 with a special show of highlights from the past three decades. Andrew Ford presented the program, as he has for the past 26 years. Listen here. Read an article about the show by Andrew Ford.
Lotte Betts-Dean sings ‘Gone’ from Red Dirt Hymns
Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano) and Sean Shibe (guitar) performing ‘Gone’ from Red Dirt Hymns at the Royal Overseas League in London, November 2020.
How to commission a Red Dirt Hymn
Andrew Ford’s Red Dirt Hymns (‘The right idea for strange times’ – Harriet Cunningham, Limelight, March 2021) are a sequence of songs about hope and fear, courage, resilience, forbearance and forgiveness – in fact, the sorts of things hymns have always been about. They have new, specially commissioned lyrics by some of Australia’s finest poets […]
Bright Shiners and Blue Poles
Steel City Strings will dust off two short works by Andrew Ford for their first concerts of 2021. Both pieces were commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Blue Poles as part of Manhattan Epiphanies, Bright Shiners for a national tour with Pekka Kuusisto in 2009. Individual pieces in Manhattan Epiphanies have subsequently been been taken […]
Red Dirt Hymns
Recently, I’ve revived an old idea that I’ve called Red Dirt Hymns. A few years ago, it came to nothing, but it seems to have found its time. Simple songs – simple to sing, not simple to write – that may yet add up to something larger as a pattern emerges. I’ve commissioned some of Australia’s […]