Tony Lewis

Tony Lewis has performed with many of Australia’s leading contemporary and cross-cultural music, dance and theatre groups, among them Sangam, Tal Vad, B’tutta, Caroline Lynn’s World Edge, The Renaissance Players, Southern Crossings, Ariel, Nardoo, Nakisa, REM Theatre, the One Extra Company, Alison’s Wonderland, The Great Bowing Company, and with musicians including Racheal Cogan, Sandy Evans, Matthew Doyle, Satsuki Odamura, Riley Lee, Mark Atkins, Michael Atherton, Margret RoadKnight, Jeannie Lewis and Cathie O’Sullivan. Visiting international collaborators have included harmonic singer David Hykes, flamenco guitarist Miguel Rivera, sitar player Raj Kumar Sharma, and the South African dance troupe Moving Into Dance. He performs in Sydney and internationally with the “world jazz” group Waratah.

International touring for performance, study, teaching and cultural exchange has taken him to Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, many Pacific Islands, and indigenous communities around Australia. He appeared as a soloist at the Commonwealth Drum Festival in Auckland in 1990, and was Musical Director of the Asian segment of the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. In 1993 he founded the percussion group Dhamor Percussion, which he directed for six years.

Major composed works include Munjong for the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust (Victorian Arts Centre, 1990), Dancing Demons for the One Extra Company (Indonesian tour, 1991), Satu Langit for the Chrissie Parrott Dance Company (Perth Festival, 1994), Wirid-jiribin, the Lyrebird, with Matthew Doyle and Dhamor Percussion (Festival of the Dreaming, 1997), and Ching-kom Dari for Sadari Theatre Company (Seoul, 2001), alongside many full-length and shorter scores for smaller dance and theatre companies and independent artists. His own album Passage (MD 3103) gathers music written for the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre.

He lectures, writes and convenes music units at Macquarie University, including African drumming and Australian indigenous music and dance, and has taught for the University of Western Sydney, the Australian International Conservatorium of Music, the University of New England and the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association. Guest lectures and seminars have included Sydney University, Australian National University, Monash University, Edith Cowan University, James Cook University, the University of Papua New Guinea, the Korean National University of the Arts and the University of Aarhus, with professional and community workshops across Australia and abroad. Ethnomusicological research for a PhD at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music has centred on the garamut (log drum) music of Baluan Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea.

He has also produced CD recordings for numerous artists, including Satsuki Odamura, Racheal Cogan, Riley Lee, Matthew Doyle, Zana Clarke, Sangam, Nardoo and Nakisa.

Artist's website: tonylewis.asia