Ann Ghandar

Ann Ghandar was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1943. From the age of two she amused herself by picking out tunes on the piano. When she was ten her English teacher, Miss C. Teesdale Smith, asked her to write incidental music for a play, and she continued to do so every year for about a decade, including a number of Shakespeare plays. A disc of some of this piano music was made by her in an Adelaide studio when she was fifteen. At that time she was self-taught in composition. During the early 1970s she studied composition with Richard Meale and Jonathan Harvey.

She pursued music and English literature concurrently until 1969. She gained First Class Honours in English at the University of Adelaide, receiving the John Howard Clark prize as the top student, while taking single studies in piano with Lance Dossor and violin with Beryl Kimber. While studying for her M.A. in English at the Australian National University she had piano lessons from Larry Sitsky at the Canberra School of Music and gained the L.Mus. diploma. After tutoring in English at Adelaide University and Flinders University she became a founding member of staff in the Music Department at the University of New England, where she has taught composition since 1974. The focus of her teaching is to find musical catalysts that stimulate creativity in students who have not yet realised that this force exists in them, and to awaken a profound love of music together with a disciplined approach to composition.

She has worked on a refinement and simplifying of her compositional style, assisted by the inspiration of Middle Eastern music. Her greatest wish is to give to others the joy that she herself receives from music.