Michael Whiticker

Born in Gundagai, NSW, Michael Whiticker completed a degree in composition at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney before two years of postgraduate study in Berlin. Through the 1980s he held major commissions and residencies with companies including the Australian Opera, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Elision, Synergy, the Seymour Group and the Song Company.

In 1989 a German Government DAAD scholarship took him back to Berlin, where he instigated ‘The Antipodes’, a festival of contemporary Australian music at which works by twenty Australian composers were performed. That achievement was recognised by a 1991 Sounds Australian Award for an outstanding contribution to the presentation of Australian fine music overseas. A Korean Government ICSK scholarship then enabled three months in Seoul in 1990 studying traditional Korean music, followed by a Berlin Senate commission that brought him back to that city later the same year.

After returning to Australia in 1991 and a residency with the Council of the City of Sydney, he spent 1992/93 as Composer-in-Residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In 1994 he was appointed Lecturer in Composition in the newly formed Music Department of the University of Western Sydney, Nepean.

Further recognition has included scholarships and featured-composer positions at the Darmstadt International Ferienkurse in Germany. His compositions have won numerous awards in Australia and Germany, among them the inaugural Fellowship of Australian Composers' Award in 1989 and second prizes in the International Composition Competition of the city of Mönchengladbach (1985) and the International Hambacher Prize (1987). The flute concerto Ad Marginem and Via Crucis, the Eleventh Station were selected as the Australian entries for the Paris Rostrum in 1991 and 1994. Chamber works from this period are gathered on Redror (MD 3183).