Alan Holley yesterday.Foto: K.Kozek.

Alan Holley- some time ago.

SPIDER SONG for soprano, violin and harpsichord have been performed yesterday (27th of May 2005) at St Augustine's Catholic Church, Eaton St., Balmain, by The Sydney Consort Ensemble, with Alan Holley being present with his wife.

Date of Birth: 1st October, 1954 Alan Holley studied composition with Ross Edwards in 1973 at the University in Sydney. Leaving university at the end of that year without completing his Bachelor of Arts degree, Holley joined the new music group AZ Music as a performer (trumpet) and composer. This group commissioned and performed several of his early works, and he remained with them for two years. In 1976 Holley founded MUSED, a new music ensemble which mainly performed music by Sydney composers, and he promoted regular concerts by this group between 1976 and 1981. MUSED also performed works by Holley, and gave him his first experience of conducting.

Holley received an Australia–Japan Foundation Travel Grant in 1977 which enabled him to undertake a two-month study tour attending new music festivals in Japan. The following year he was awarded grants from the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Music Board of the Australia Council to represent Australia at the Gulbenkian Foundation Summer School for Composers and Choreographers at Surrey University in the UK. Holley was the recipient of Composers' Fellowships from the Music Board of the Australia Council in 1980 and 1982.

The Holleys yesterday.Jyoti Brundson has written The Spider Song lyrics. Foto K.Kozek.

Holley has also built a career for himself as a conductor. After MUSED he conducted community-based orchestras before founding the Northern Chamber Orchestra in 1981. This ensemble gave him the opportunity both to expand his experience as a conductor, and to fill what he perceived to be a gap in Sydney's musical community. Holley was a participant in the ABC Conductors' Workshops under Werner Andreas Albert with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 1985, and again in 1986 with the ABC Sinfonia. In 1986 he founded the new music ensemble, The Gallery Players, and in 1989, the Sydney Bach Orchestra.

Alan Holley's compositions include a chamber opera based on the life of Dorothea Mackellar, works for chamber orchestra, for small ensembles, for voice, and for solo instruments. He considers his experiences as a conductor and musical director to have been invaluable in teaching him the art of orchestration. Biography compiled from information (c. 1994) supplied by the composer, and from an article, "Australian Composers and their Flute Music" by Christine Draeger (The Flute, November, 1994)

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