Michael Barkl

Michael Barkl was born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1958 into a musical family.^[1] He learnt classical piano from the age of seven, later becoming obsessed with the electric guitar after hearing the album Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsys as a teenager.^[2] From rock guitar he expanded his interests into jazz guitar, and then into bass guitar and double bass.^[3] At the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music he initially studied jazz improvisation with Roger Frampton, and followed this with degree studies in composition with Vincent Plush, Martin Wesley-Smith, Warren Burt, Ross Edwards, Don Banks and Graham Hair.^[4] Postgraduate studies in composition and musicology were with Ann Ghandar, Gerald Florian Messner [de], Richard Toop and Greg Schiemer.^[5] He graduated with a master's degree in composition (University of New England (Australia)) and doctorates in musicology (Deakin University) and electronic music (University of Wollongong).^[6]

After working as a freelance bass player, Barkl joined TAFE NSW in 1987 as foundation head of its contemporary music section.^[7][8][9] During this time he contributed a series of biographies of Australian composers to The Oxford Companion to Australian Music, A Dictionary of Australian Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.^[10][11][12] Further publications documented the compositional techniques of Franco Donatoni^[13] and Riccardo Formosa,^[14] explored aspects of the economic and cultural contexts of music composition,^[15][16] and described the process of electronic music composition using the program Pure Data.^[17][18][19] He also published educational texts on composition,^[20] harmonic analysis^[21] and improvisation,^[22] and a volume of memoirs.^[23] From 1997 Barkl was foundation Adviser (later, Chief Examiner) of Contemporary Popular Music for the Australian Music Examinations Board.^[24][9]

Barkl's music exhibits a combination of influences from European styled modernism to jazz.^[25][26] An early work, Rota (1981) for piano trio, is clearly influenced by twentieth century Italian music, specifically Franco Donatoni.^[27] Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was awarded segnalata in the 1981 International Valentino Bucchi Composition Competition.^[28] A pair of subsequent orchestral works, Voce di testa (1981) and Voce di petto (1982), while maintaining the Italian association through their titles, added more jazz influence, however slight.^[29][30] Drumming (1983) was characterised as "an exciting piano piece", "bring[ing] together Indian tabla drumming with jazz pianism",^[31] while Ballade (1984) for six instruments, structured as a reverie interrupting a café piano solo, brought Barkl to the attention of the critics, Roger Covell describing him "one of the most musical of younger Australian composers".^[32] Subsequent works, such as Cabaret for orchestra, Blues for bass clarinet and percussion (based on a Charlie Parker riff), Disco for percussion quartet, Red for recorder (based on Jimi Hendrix’s Red House) and Smoky for harpsichord, developed Barkl’s jazz-inspired instrumental style^[33][34] until a complete change emerged with a series of lengthy electronic works composed using the open source patching language Pure Data.^[35] These used large banks of computer generated oscillators to build thick textures of sine waves, saturating the aural space.

Michael Barkl was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours (Australia) for "service to the performing arts and music education".^[36]

• Voce di testa, 1981
• Voce di petto, 1982
• Iambus, 1982
• Cabaret, 1985
• Rondo, 1986

• Ballade for six instruments, 1984
• The laird of Drumblair for seven instruments, 1987
• Disco for four percussion and electronics, 1990

• Night Words for viola and piano, 1977
• Music for two trumpets and tape, 1978
• Rota for piano trio, 1981
• Expressive and ferocious for string quartet, 1985
• Blues for bass clarinet and percussion, 1986
• Vamp for guitar, 1988
• Red for descant recorder, 1996
• Smoky for harpsichord, 1997
• Coming Out, Fanfare for viola and double bass, 1998
• Here… for clarinet, piano and cello, 2008

• Jazz music, 1979
• Jazz music II for two pianos, 1979
• Drumming, 1983
• Five pieces, 1995

• Water, where are you going? SATB, 1984

• Night words – the ravishing for mezzo-soprano and piano, 1977

• Backyard swing, 1986

• The animals Noah forgot, 1988

• Rosalia, 1980
• The paradox of Pythagoras: nos 1–27, 2007
• Music of the spheres: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, 2007
• Music of Grace: The heavy dark trees line the streets of summer, 2007
• Music of Grace: The cat dances and the moon shines brightly, 2007
• Music of Grace: The crystals in the cave absorb the light as if they have not seen it in a million years, 2008

• https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/barkl-michael Retrieved 19 June 2019.