Christopher Sainsbury
Composer | Songwriter | Guitarist | Educator

Research

As a composer and educator Christopher Sainsbury's research explores many inspirations and expressions. He is passionately interested in regionalism in music, in contemporary Indigenous (Australian) music composition in the C21st, in contemporary guitar music, in surf music and in Indigenous education. Pertaining to regionalism, this is where one draws upon motives and images from their local region and reconstitutes them in new ways in creative works that fortify a sense of regional identity. Being of mixed heritage (English, Irish, Dutch, Aboriginal - Dharug/Eora) he also participates in defining contemporary Indigenous music in the C21st through new works. Yet his inspirations also lead him into extended guitar techniques and notation practices, into surf music, and he is a passionate educator of many years. His works are known for their inventiveness within traditions and for solid old-fashioned orchestration. 

Sainsbury is Associate Professor in Composition at the Australian National University (ANU). Previously he was Head of Department in Aboriginal Visual and Performing Arts at the Eora Centre, an Indigenous Tertiary College in Sydney for 23 years, and an extension of that work is now via the Ngarra-burria First Peoples Composers program. He is founder and director of the program which is for the creative and professional development of Indigenous Australian composers, for which he and the program have won and accolades and awards including an Australian music leadership award – the inaugural APRA National Luminary Award (2020).

Compositions

Past commissions and/or performances include: Carl Pini and the Australian Chamber Orchestra/ACO (1987), Australian flute elder Gordon Yemm (1987), Michael Hannan and the Newcastle Bicentennial Authority (1988), theatre director Noel Tovey for the play Aboriginal Protestors for the Sydney Festival (1994), a Guitar Concerto for Spanish virtuoso Jose Maria Gallardo del Rey which featured at the Darwin International Guitar Festival (2002), Netherlands virtuosi Erik Bosgraaf (bass recorder) and Izhar Elias (guitar), the Central Coast Symphony, and more.

More recent commissions are from Roland Peelman for the Canberra International Music Festival, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Ken Murray, Richard Mills and the Victorian Opera, Australian Voices, the AMEB, Alicia Crossley, Melbourne String Ensemble, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra Australian Chamber Series, the CSO, Sally Walker, the University of British Columbia and Axiom Brass (Chicago), Ensemble Three (Ken Murray, Joel Brennan and Don Immel), Bel A Cappella Sydney, a series of student flute works from Allegro Publishing, ANAM (featuring Reuben Johnson and Paavali Jumpannen), Brisbane Symphony Orchestra, and more. For more see Find Scores page.

A selection of other compositions include for Sally Walker and Emily Granger, Levande Musik (Sweden), cor anglais player Rachel Tolmie and the Central Coast Concertante Ensemble (cond. Chris Bearman), Royal Australian Navy Band, the Central Coast Philharmonia, the Central Coast Symphony Orchestra, Evlana Ensemble Ireland, the World Expo Brisbane 1988, Sally Greenaway and Ed Le Brocq, clarinettist Shawn Earle, Bouddi Voice Choir, Ensemble Offspring, Griffyn Ensemble ACT, Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Richard Mills, The Promise Choir, Aboriginal Sydney’s inaugural Koorabaret in 1992, Italian virtuoso guitarist Gian Marco Ciampa, Mark Xiao and the Australian Flute Festival, the Australian Double Reed Society, German recorder player Sylvia Hinz, Yale Concert Band, NSSWE cond. Patrick Brennan, virtuoso pianist Edward Neeman, former Greens Senator Bob Brown, TSO clarinettist Eloise Fisher, Primal Dance Company for the Sydney Fringe Festival, Derwent Valley Concert Band, guitar virtuosi Andrew Blanch and Vlad Gorbach, Queensland Youth Orchestra, Tasmanian Youth Orchestra, New England Philharmonic Orchestra Boston, Royal Airforce Band Australia, and many more. Some of this goes back into the mid 1980s.

In many of Sainsbury’s works one may expect to hear the guitar, his main instrument. As a guitarist he has played in all the south-Eastern states at various clubs, pubs, cafes, surf clubs and festivals going back to 1979. Check tracks from the solo guitar album Anima on the guitar music page.

Many scores of his works are available from the Australian Music Centre.