Associate Professor Ann Ghandar

Biography

Associate Professor in Music, co-founder of The Department of Music, and the founder of Composition at the University of New England. In 1974 Ann Ghandar developed and introduced the first Composition courses in Australia that were open to all music students. She pioneered the introduction of the first external composition courses in Australia and worldwide in 1998.

Ann Ghandar is a multi-faceted scholar, in Composition, Performance, Ethnomusicology, Musicology, and English Literature. Her research interests cover: 20th and 21st century music, particularly Australian composers and the American composer Charles Ives; in Middle Eastern music she has made extensive studies of forms and structures, and learnt to play several Middle Eastern instruments; as well as Arabic language. In English literature her studies covered the period from 1300 to the present, with a particular interest in 17th century literature.

Ann Ghandar is an eminent, internationally recognized composer. Her music has been performed and broadcast in the United States, England, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Egypt, and of course Australia. She has been a visiting professor of composition in The Cairo Conservatorium, and lectured at UCLA, and USC in the United States.

Ann Ghandar is an outstanding international concert pianist. She gave the premier performances of Messiaen's Four Rhythmic Studies, the complete works for piano by Schoenberg, and lves' Concord Sonata, and First Sonata, in Australia and Britain. Her repertoire includes Chopin's scherzos and ballades, Schubert's late piano sonatas, Prokofiev's sonatas 7 and 9, Debussy's Etudes books 1 and 2, and works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok, Scriabin, Ravel, Berg, and many other composers which she has performed in Australia and overseas. All these performances were done from memory, in itself a rare achievement. In 1992 she was the first Australian performer to give a concert in the new Cairo Opera House.

Qualifications

B.A. (Hons) Adelaide University; M.A, Australian National University, B.Mus. Southampton University (UK), LMusA