BIOGRAPHY

Ben Hoadley leads a busy and diverse musical life as a composer, performer and teacher on both sides of the Tasman. He holds degrees in bassoon performance from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the New England Conservatory (Boston). Ben studied composition with the late Edwin Carr and subsequently took classes at the Juilliard School in New York, working with Conrad Cummings. He most recently completed a Master of Music in composition at the University of Waikato, where he was awarded a Master’s Thesis Scholarship and 1st place in the 2015 Lilburn Student Composition Award. Ben has worked as a freelance bassoonist with most of the professional orchestras in Australasia, including contracts as guest principal bassoon in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. He presented the first interactive online masterclass for the Australian Youth Orchestra in 2014 and tutored for the AYO’s Young Symphonists in 2016. Since 2007 Ben has lectured at the University of Auckland School of Music.

Composer website:  via soundcloud /ben-hoadley-140395867

FEATURED WORKS

Three Sketches for a Nocturne and Winter I Was, for alto flute, piano and voice.

These two pieces are miniatures with the alto flute as a common element. They were written independently to each other and premiered as separate pieces by flautist Luca Manghi. In a subsequent concert we decided to programme them one after the other without a break and found the result to work so well that they seemed like they were always meant to be played together!
Written by well-known Wellington-based art curator, poet and artist Gregory O’Brien, the poem “Winter I Was” is from his collection of poems by the same title. Subtitled in memory, Morton Feldman and John Cage, it was written in New York City after hearing of the death of John Cage. The pianist mentioned in the poem is Marianne Schroeder, who made various recordings of Cage and Feldman on the Hat Hut label.

Featured in Spoken Waves September 2016