Nigel Westlake
Westlake has played in fusion bands and soundtrack sessions, with Australia’s leading instrumental groups, and as a soloist with orchestras and classical ensembles in Australia and in major cities worldwide, from London and Paris to Tokyo, Beijing and New York.
Nigel Westlake’s professional career as a clarinettist began in 1975, at the age of seventeen. His studies have taken in contemporary performance, composition, screen composition, orchestration and conducting with leading practitioners in Australia and Europe.
His film work includes the features Babe, Babe – Pig in the City, Children of the Revolution, A Little Bit of Soul and The Nugget, and the IMAX films Antarctica, Imagine, The Edge and Solarmax. Television credits range across documentaries, telemovies, news themes and station idents; several of his compositions were heard in international broadcasts during the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Awards for his writing include the Gold Medal at the New York International Radio Festival and several APRA and Screen Composer Guild awards for film and concert music. The feature Babe won the Golden Globe in 1996 for best musical or comedy.
His conducting debut was with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 1997; he has since led film scoring sessions and performances in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Tasmania.
His music has been taken up by John Williams, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Australia Ensemble, Slava Grigoryan, Synergy Percussion, the Amsterdam Percussion Ensemble, Trilok Gurtu, the New York Percussion Ensemble, Michael Kieran Harvey, and Australia’s leading orchestras and soloists.
His opus 1, Omphalo Centric Lecture (1984) for percussion quartet, has become one of the most frequently performed and recorded works in the percussion repertoire, in the USA, Japan, Europe and Australia.
In 2004 he was awarded the HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University.
Compositions by Nigel Westlake appear on
Fluid Lines
After nearly a decade of hanging out, talking shop and drinking coffee, virtuoso guitarists Daniel McKay and Antony Field formed Duo 19. Their debut presents an eclectic programme of twentieth- and twenty-first-century works, including music by Australians Nigel Westlake and Phillip Houghton.
The Glass Soldier
Music from Hannie Rayson’s play The Glass Soldier. Based on a true story, it is a sincere tribute to Australians who fought in the Great War: people who had little, yet gave everything.
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.
Rabid Bay
Michael Kieran Harvey is one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary piano music of his generation. This recording presents some of Australia's cutting-edge piano music – bold and experimental, but also increasingly lyrical.
Sidekick
Sidekick is the debut CD from guitar duo Ziggy and Miles. It pairs new works written for the brothers with their own arrangement of Debussy’s Clair de Lune and repertoire from Spain, Latin America and Australia that has shaped their musical identity.
Nigel Westlake is a member of
Australia Ensemble
The Australia Ensemble, resident at the University of New South Wales since its founding in 1980, is widely recognised as Australia’s leading chamber music ensemble. Seven principal instrumentalists form its core, joined by guests for standard repertoire and unusual combinations.