Biography
Edwards’ Dawn Mantras greeted the new 2000 millennium in a global telecast from the sails of the Sydney Opera House to universal acclaim and an estimated audience of two billion people around the world. Other well-lauded works include his Fourth Symphony – Star Chant, his Oboe Concerto – Bird Spirit Dreaming, Full Moon Dances and Frog and Star Cycle.
Edwards has been engaged by many commissioners across his career and his music is performed at international festivals, notably the Edinburgh International Music Festival, the London Music Festival, New York’s Mostly Mozart and recently the Tuscon Winter Chamber Music Festival, which commissioned and premiered his Four Inscapes with a solo part for Chinese pipa, taken up by Wu Man, the world’s leading pipa virtuoso.
Edwards’ music, with its dancing rhythms inspired by the voices of living organisms, has always attracted choreography. His violin concerto Maninyas has been taken up by some of the world’s leading dance companies including the renowned Houston Ballet which also commissioned and premiered the ballet Zodiac, choreographed by Stanton Welsh.
As one of Australia’s best known and most performed composers, Edwards has won numerous awards. Two Keating Fellowships in the 1990s enabled him to embark on a symphonic cycle of which he has so far completed six symphonies and is dreaming of a seventh. In 1997, Ross Edwards was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
