John McCaughey
John McCaughey is a Melbourne conductor and composer, and long-serving musical director of the Astra Chamber Music Society, known for adventurous programmes of Australian music.
He has directed the Astra Concerts since 1978, commissioning and presenting contemporary Australian works that cross choral performance with other media. He taught for many years in the former Department of Music at La Trobe University, and at the University of Melbourne, the Victorian College of the Arts, and the Folkwang Musikhochschule in Essen.
A student of Wolfgang Hufschmidt in composition and Gerd Zacher in organ, his own piano writing includes Five Small Pieces on Contemporary Australian Piano (MD 3066), Toccata da Nielico on Broadway Boogie (MD 3315), and Eight Preludes on Threnody (MD 3475), with a further electro-acoustic release on Cybele in Germany (2002).
Press quotes
possibly the most self-effacing and reluctant Australian composer, yet one of Australia's busiest and most original musicians
Compositions by John McCaughey appear on
Threnody
Michael Kieran Harvey’s landmark 1995 Astra recital of late twentieth-century Australian piano music returns in a 2024 Move re-master. Premiere recordings by Harvey, Vine, Campbell, McCaughey, Byrne, Humble and Anderson form one continuous programme.
Broadway Boogie
Broadway Boogie gathers premiere recordings of recent Australian piano works by Andrew Ford, Andrew Byrne, John McCaughey, Nigel Westlake, Mark Pollard and Michael Kieran Harvey, loosely linked by allusions to New York. Melbourne’s Herald-Sun named it the best classical CD of 2008.
Contemporary Australian Piano
A valuable collection of Australian piano works by some of the country’s most respected and inventive composers, performed by pianist-composer Larry Sitsky.
Other credits
Astra 60
This recording captures a concert of Australian piano music celebrating Astra’s long support of Australian composers and performers. For sixty years the Astra Chamber Music Society has placed new Australian work beside international new-music currents, always with a distinctive cultural frame.
Kinetic Conversations
A set of free improvisations by composer–pianist Keith Humble and American double-bass virtuoso Bertram Turetzky, taped in 1986. Two new-music pioneers meet in spontaneous, high-energy dialogue for piano and bass.