Easton: Concerto on Australian Themes / An Australian in Paris / Beasts of the Bush

Michael Easton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, in 1954. He received his musical training at the Royal Academy of Music where the help and encouragement of Sir Lennox Berkeley confirmed his ambition to be a composer. On leaving the Royal Academy he found work in the music-publishing world, first with J&W Chester and then with Novello & Company. As an ambassador for their publications he was required to travel widely in Europe, America, and the Far East. This brought him to Australia where, in 1982, he was head-hunted by Allans Music and decided to make Melbourne his home.

Once in Australia Michael Easton quickly established himself as a practical composer able to respond to commissions of all kinds, as a brilliant arranger of other people's music and as an all-round musician of wide abilities. By 1986 he felt able to retire from music publishing and devote himself entirely to work as a free-lance composer. This, however, did not prevent him from forming a notable piano-duo partnership with Len Vorster and contributing many stimulating pre-concert talks to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Music Viva series. He also became known as a provocative music critic for the Melbourne Age and Sunday Herald and frequent contributor to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1990, in partnership with Len Vorster, he founded the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, a concentrated long-weekend that embraces opera, ballet orchestral and chamber music, jazz, talks and exhibitions, and involves musicians of international status. It is now firmly established as one of the most innovative events in the Australian music calendar.

Among the many commissions that have come Michael Easton's way is a series of children's operas, beginning in 1986 with The Snow Queen and including The Musicians of Bremen (1990). The Emperor's New Clothes (1993), and The Selfish Giant (1995). These have proved immensely popular and have been toured widely in Australia as a means of introducing young audiences to the pleasures of opera. Orchestral commissions include two symphonies and a number of concertos especially written for distinguished soloist friends - for example the Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra (1990) for Frederick Shade, and the Concertino for Trumpet and Orchestra (1991) for Geoffrey Payne. He has also composed scores for numerous film and television productions, and a musical. Petrov, which was first performed in 1992 as part of the Melbourne Summer Music Festival.

Michael Easton's music reflects his own ebullience, energy and good humour. It is entirely accessible, reliant upon ear-catching melodies, piquant harmonies, and brilliant orchestration. The influence of French music (particularly that of Milhaud, Poulenc, and Ravel) and jazz is strong, the former a matter both of natural sympathy and the stimulation of his studies with Berkeley (himself a French-trained composer), and the latter an outcome of his own skills as a jazz pianist. Wickedly witty, and beautifully crafted, it is music with a capacity to please at first hearing that conceals a depth and seriousness that may only gradually become apparent.