Caitlin Rowley, composer

They say that life begins at 40. However, for Caitlin Rowley, life began at the age of 17, on starting a Bachelor of Music course majoring in Composition at the University of Sydney. Over the five years of her Honours degree, she studied composition with Peter Sculthorpe and Eric Gross and took elective classes on Stravinsky, palaeography and mediaeval Spanish music, while developing a strong interest in the music of the 20th century.

Caitlin's music shows strong influences of the music being written in early 20th century Paris (Satie and Stravinsky in particular) and Minimalism. If she were to describe her music with one term, it would be 'post-minimalist'.

Caitlin's music has received performances around the world. Her Pieces of Eight written for and performed by Ensemble Decadanse in Montpellier, France for their '2000 miniatures for the year 2000' project, has since been performed in various arrangements in Brisbane and London. The performance in Brisbane, by Topology, was recorded by the ABC and broadcast nationally. Her most recent performances have included two pieces which were incorporated into a collaborative work at the 2010 Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway. September 2010 sees the premiere of a new piece for flexible-instrumentation quintet and piano - Deconstruct: Point, line, plane - written for the London New Wind Festival.

In her Honours year, Caitlin began to compose for short films. The first film she scored, Toybox, won Third Prize at the National Student Film and Video Competition and received a public screening at Sydney's Valhalla Cinema.

In 1998, Caitlin was accepted for the Australian Film, Television and Radio School's limited-place screen composition course (the precursor to their highly regarded degree course in screen composition) with Jan Preston. Preston described Caitlin's score for the set film Nightride as containing 'flashes of brilliance'.

Further film work has included composing a MIDI score over email for a 3D animation being created in Sweden and a score for an interactive Flash narrative, as well as more 'traditional' films and animations. Most recently she has worked on a score for a film by animator John McGhee which uses Flash animation to explain aspects of diabetes to newly diagnosed sufferers. This film was commissioned by NHS Tayside.

While at uni, Caitlin discovered the music of Erik Satie, which led to her Honours-year research paper, Satie the Neoclassicist. A section of this paper, 'Neoclassical Aspects of Form in the Music of Erik Satie', was presented by invitation at the 1995 Graduate Music Symposium run by the Musicological Society of Australia and was well received. She continues to (intermittently) build on this research online at her website Erik Satie's Crystal Ball, a resource which has been linked to by Ivy League universities and is a recommended resource linked from the NSW Government's HSC Online website.