As Musica Viva’s Featured Composer for 2011 Ian Munro’s work will feature throughout the 2011 International Concert Season.

Ian Munro is one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded musicians, with a career spanning over 30 countries. He is also the only Australian to have won the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels for his first large scale composition, Dreams. This win in 2003 sparked a string of commissions including the orchestral work Blue Rags (2005) and the piano quintet Divertissement sur le nom d’Erik Satie. More recent works include a song cycle for mezzo soprano Elizabeth Campbell and Black is the Night for Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Ian Munro’s works will feature in the following performances:

-     The Eggner Trio will perform Tales of Old Russia (2008), a work inspired by and describing in music three Russian folk tales collected by the great folklorist Alexander Afanasiev.

-      String Quartet no 1, From an Exhibition of Australian Woodcuts (2009), commissioned for the Coriole Music Festival and Musica Viva by Coriole Music Festival & Friends, will be performed by the Brentano String Quartet. A homage to Ballarat and Melbourne, the work is a musical evocation of a number of vibrant 1930s and 1940s woodcuts.

-     Ian Munro will join with the Goldner String Quartet to give the world premiere performances of his Piano Quintet (2010), commissioned for Musica Viva by Julian Burnside AO QC.

-     Clarinet Quintet, Songs from the Bush (2010), which explores folk song and dance forms, will be performed by Sabine Meyer and the Modigliani String Quartet. It has been commissioned for Musica Viva by John Sharpe and Claire Armstrong.