Phillip Houghton
Phillip Houghton’s guitar music has been performed and recorded by leading musicians, including John Williams and Timothy Kain. A self-taught composer, he drew on classical, jazz, rock, ambient and world music.
Phillip Houghton was born in 1954 in Melbourne. Originally trained as an artist, he began music studies at twenty, with advice and encouragement from the late John Champ, and studied classical guitar with Sebastian Jorgensen at the artists’ colony Montsalvat in Eltham, Victoria, where he later lived and worked.
As a guitarist he toured extensively and was recorded by the ABC before leaving performance in 1980 to concentrate on composition. Helen Gifford and Peter Mumme encouraged his developing style. He wrote for theatre, dance and film, including John Dingwall’s feature The Custodian and Tony Lawrence’s Plasmo animation series.
Early influences ranged from Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Gryphon, Gong and Miles Davis to Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Riley, Crumb and Eno. His work kept a strong interest in art, mythology and the environment.
Some twenty of his guitar solos, published by Moonstone Music, are on the AMEB national syllabus, and he is also represented in the Benjamin Verdery Guitar Series for Frederick Harris Publishers.
Artist's website: www.philliphoughton.com.au
Phillip Houghton is featured on the following titles
Light on the Edge
The landscape and atmosphere of Australia come to life in this varied collection of solo and chamber guitar works by Australian composer Phillip Houghton.
Producer
Compositions by Phillip Houghton also 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.
d'aujourd'hui
Crossing ragtime, tango, modern classical and folk idioms, this violin and guitar programme runs from Piazzolla’s 1986 Histoire du Tango to Tim Hansen’s 2007 rescoring of Earwig for Zoë Black and Daniel McKay.
Contra
Contra Guitar Duo’s debut recording presents the lyricism, complex rubato and colour the pair most enjoy in two-guitar playing, across a short programme of romantic and contemporary works.
Fairy Tales, Monsters and Wild Animals
Made for young and old, Meredith Connie’s solo guitar performances on this recording have enchanted audiences across two continents, evoking fantastical worlds and speaking to classical and non-classical listeners alike.
Character Interludes
Virginia Taylor and Timothy Kain present a Southern Hemisphere program for flute and guitar, pairing Argentine and Bolivian guitarist-composers with Australian works by Phillip Houghton and Elena Kats-Chernin.
A Sympathetic Resonance
Peter Constant presents classical guitar works by Australian composers, joined by Marion Schaap on guitar, Mardi McSullea on flute and Helen Noonan, soprano.