Colin Bright is an Australian composer who, unusually among his peers, is essentially self-taught; his early engagement with socio-political issues and Aboriginal music led him to adopt Peter Sculthorpe as a mentor in the early 1970s. He has held Composer and International Fellowships and received commissions from most of Australia’s leading ensembles, with his music broadcast in 27 countries. Central to his output is the idea of “psyche of place” and, latterly, what he calls “urban psychoscapes” – works that distil the essence of a writer or poet, often sampling their voice. His opera The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (1993/94) was staged at the 1997 Sydney Festival. Among his honours, The Wild Boys (1997) and The Last Whale (2008) both won Best Composition awards. While on an Australia Council Fellowship he wrote Parallel Universes, a concerto for tenor saxophone and orchestra (2005); in 2007 he was the Trans-Tasman exchange composer with the Auckland Philharmonia, and in 2010 the Freshwater Chamber Music Festival commissioned his Climate Change trio.
