The Art of Melody

Tony Gould

Pianist and composer Tony Gould is one of Australia’s most respected musicians. His career has spanned jazz and other improvisatory forms as well as traditional and contemporary classical, and for decades he has stood at the forefront of music education in Australia.

Graeme Lyall

Graeme Lyall is widely regarded as one of the greatest jazz saxophone players and arrangers Australia has produced. He performs, writes, arranges and teaches, and is Artistic Director of the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra and musical director of its Composers Ensemble.

Ben Robertson

Ben Robertson is an Australian double bass player valued for melodic solos, driving rhythm and a lyricism founded on uncommon virtuosity. He is a core member of the Tony Gould Trio and Quartet.

Joe Batrouney

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin wrote the songs that lodge in the ear and stay there: White Christmas, Easter Parade, Blue Skies, Puttin' on the Ritz. Simple, direct, and built for the heart, they still travel wherever melody is welcome.

Ray Evans

Ray Evans was an American lyricist whose film and popular songs include Mona Lisa, Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), the Christmas standard Silver Bells, and Tammy.

Sammy Fain

Sammy Fain (1902–1989) was an American composer of popular song for Broadway and Hollywood, whose lasting standards belong to the Great American Songbook.

George Gershwin

George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose music spanned popular song, Broadway and the classical concert hall, leaving melodies that remain widely known.

Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin wrote the words that made twentieth-century American song unforgettable: sly, tender, and built to swing. His lyrics for George Gershwin and others still give singers and jazz ensembles their sharpest material.

Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the words that made the American musical a story-first art: books and lyrics for Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music, songs built for character, courage and lasting melody.

Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern's songs sit at the heart of the American musical and the jazz standard book: long-lined melodies that carry character and story as easily as they invite improvisation, from Show Boat ballads to Hollywood fox-trots.

John Lennon

John Lennon's songs cut through styles and decades with plainspoken hooks and melodies that refuse to age. From Beatles classics to the solo anthem Imagine, his writing keeps finding new voices in jazz rooms, a cappella circles and the concert hall.

Jay Livingston

Jay Livingston (1915–2001) was an American popular-song and film composer. His Oscar-winning melodies, including Mona Lisa, Que Sera, Sera and Silver Bells, became lasting standards of mid-century Hollywood songwriting.

Frederick Loewe

Frederick Loewe (1901–1988) was an Austrian-American composer of Broadway musical theatre. His scores for My Fair Lady and Camelot became lasting standards and were both filmed.

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney's songs travel far beyond their rock origins. Melodic, singable and built for reinvention, they turn up here in jazz sets, a cappella harmony, intimate guitar ballads and even harpsichord with drums and bass.

Richard Rodgers

Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) was an American composer of musical theatre whose songs became standards of the twentieth-century stage and screen. Over five decades he wrote more than nine hundred songs and dozens of Broadway musicals.

Dorothy Fields

Dorothy Fields (1904–1974) was an American lyricist and librettist who wrote more than four hundred songs for Broadway musicals and films. Her standards remain among the most recorded of the twentieth century.

Albert Hague

Albert Hague (1920–2001) was a German-born American songwriter and actor. His Broadway musicals include Plain and Fancy, source of the enduring standard Young and Foolish.

Arnold B. Horwitt

Irving Kahal

Bronisław Kaper

Alan Jay Lerner

The lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner, written chiefly with Frederick Loewe, shaped some of the most durable songs in musical theatre. My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Camelot, Gigi and Paint Your Wagon still circulate as standards far beyond the stage.

Joseph McCarthy

Arthur A. Penn

Arthur A. Penn was the composer of the ballad Smilin’ Through (1919).

Harry Tierney