Composer

Biography

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Diana Blom moved to Sydney, Australia in 1969. She has studied music at the University of Canterbury, NZ (B. Music), University of Sydney (PhD minimal music in an educational context) and the University of Michigan (M.A. musicology). Composition studies have been with Peter Sculthorpe and Ian Farr.


Diana was Composer-in-Residence with the Australian Opera in 1974 and commissioned to write a children’s opera, The Pied Piper. Other commissions include songs for voice and piano for the ABC Radio Coming Out, Ready Or Not Show; music for an ABC-TV four part series on Daisy Bates; and music for Alitji in Wonderland, the Marionette Theatre of Australia’s shadow puppet translation of ’Alice’s Adventures’ into Pitjantjatjara.


She lived in the U.S., Hong Kong and Malaysia for ten years before returning to Sydney and the sounds of these countries’ musics can be heard in some works. Recent compositions include chamber music for voice and piano, for cello and piano, for voice, recorder, harpsichord and cello, for solo piano and for solo harpsichord. Gong Agong for acoustic piano and pre-recorded CD, co-composed with Emma Stacker, was one of two finalists in Musica Nova 2006, Society for Electrocacoustic Music of Czech Republic. Diana has an interest in Australian writers and has set to music words of David Malouf, Helen Garner, Jocelyn Ortt-Saeed, Tim Malfroy, Robyn Ravlich and Peter Goldsworthy.


Diana is senior lecturer in music in the School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney. She plays harpsichord and piano and plays in a chamber group, Phoebus’ Fire, which performs Baroque and contemporary classical repertoire. Recent recordings include performances of two Australian solo piano works (by Ross Edwards and Stuart Greenbaum) on Jo-Wha, a disc of intercultural Australian musics (Wirripang 2006); and her work for cello and piano, The Whale’s Song, on the CD Music of the Spirit (Wirripang 2008) in which she plays the piano. Recent publications include Music Composition Toolbox, co-authored by Matthew Hindson and Damian Barbeler published by Science Press (2007); three works for recorder quartet and a piece for recorder and cello published by Orpheus Music; and several articles published in Sounds Australian, British Journal of Music Education, Research Studies in Music and International Journal of Music Education.