Anne Boyd AM (b. 1946), composer and teacher, was born in Sydney and studied composition with Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney before earning a PhD at the University of York. She lectured in music at the University of Sussex before returning to Australia to take up an Australia Council grant that enabled her to work full-time as a composer between 1977 and 1981. She had already written one of her best-known works, As I crossed a bridge of dreams, which is part of the standard contemporary choir repertoire, but during this period she wrote various chamber works, the oratorio The Death of Captain Cook, and the choral symphony Coal River. In 1981 she became the founding head of Hong Kong University's Department of Music, and in 1990 Professor and Head of the Department of Music at the University of Sydney. While working in Hong Kong she wrote the children's opera The Little Mermaid for the Australian Opera. Boyd gained wider fame as a public advocate of increased funding for Australian universities as the focus of the Bob Connolly/Robin Anderson documentary Facing the Music in 2001.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2003
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
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