Biography

Johannes MacDonald (b. 1996) is an Australian composer currently studying at the Sydney Conservatorium. Johannes showed an interest in music from a young age, and at 12 was accepted into the Conservatorium High School, studying flute under Rosamund Plummer. He later switched to composition, studying under Peter McNamara, Huw Belling, Nigel Butterley and Jack Symonds.

In 2013, Johannes attended the Sydney Symphonietta Composition Project, run by Richard Gill, and in 2014, Johannes’s HSC Music Extension composition ‘Anxiety’ was selected for performance at Encore. In 2015, Johannes begun studying composition at the Sydney Conservatorium, studying under Paul Stanhope, Ursula Caporali, Damian Barbeler, Joe Manton, Michael Smetanin, and Anthony Pateras. In April 2016, the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony premiered his composition “wound, disembodied”, and in September, Ensemble Nouveau performed his composition “mosaic” at their premiere concert.

Composer website:  https://soundcloud.com/johannesmacdonald

Featured Works

mosaic, for Orchestra.

The title “mosaic” describes both the piece’s compositional construction and textural effect: all melodic material is derived from a single, almost diatonic sounding serial tone-row, which up close appears as a repeated fragment, but from a distance appears as a constantly glimmering, shifting symmetrical image.

Featured in Orchestral Waves (November 2018).