Academic Staff

Professor Jane Davidson
Callaway/Tunley Chair of Music
Coordinator, Postgraduate Studies
Email: jwd@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Professor Darryl Poulsen
Head of School
Director, Brass Studies
Email: music.head@uwa.edu.au

Dr David Symons
Director, Academic Studies, and Senior Lecturer
Email: dsymons@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Professor Roger Smalley
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Email: rsmalley@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Dr Jonathan McIntosh
Associate Lecturer in Ethnomusicology
Email: jonathan.mcintosh@uwa.edu.au

Peter Moore OAM
Director, Wind Studies
Email: pmoore@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Paul Wright
Director, String Studies
Email: pwright@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Graeme Gilling
Director, Keyboard Studies
Email: ggilling@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Dr Suzanne Wijsman
Senior Lecturer, String Studies
Email: swijsman@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Dr Nicholas Bannan
Lecturer, Music Education
Email: nbannan@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Andrea Stanberg
Lecturer, Music Education
Email: stanberg@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Dr Robert Faulkner
Research Fellow
Email: faulkner@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Emeritus Professor David Tunley
Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Emeritus Professor Sandra Bowdler
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Email: sbowdler@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Dr Victoria Rogers
Lecturer, Musicology
Email: vrogers@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Dr Chris Tonkin
Lecturer, Composition
Email: ctonkin@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Professor Jane Davidson
Callaway/Tunley Chair of Music
Coordinator, Postgraduate Studies

Jane Davidson has written more than one hundred scholarly contributions on performance, expression, therapy and the determinants of artistic abilities. Her edited volume the Music Practitioner (Ashgate, 2004) explores the uses of research for the practising musician. Current research projects include: the expressive body movements of duettists; the adaptive value of music, including singing and personal identity; the development of ‘talent’; the function of music in mental health settings; the music performances of the Temple Street musicians in Hong Kong; the process of music theatre directing, and the staging of Baroque works. These interests reflect her unusual background in music psychology and musicology, vocal performance and contemporary dance.

Indeed, Jane has undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in music, vocal performance and contemporary dance, having studied in England at Newcastle, Leeds and London Universities, and at Laval in Quebec, Canada. She has won many prizes and scholarships, including a Rotary International Graduate Scholarship, and number of awards for singing. In her academic career, she has taught at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, contributing to courses on: psychological approaches to performance, development of musical ability, psychology for musicians, music therapy, music in the community, gender studies in music, opera and music theatre studies, vocal pedagogy and movement classes. She was a recent recipient of the University of Sheffield’s ‘Senate Award’ for her innovatory teaching practices.

A former editor of the international academic journal Psychology of Music, she is currently Vice-president of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. After much solo operatic performance, which included world premiere performances of operas at London International Opera Festival and a main role with the highly innovative and acclaimed Théâtre de Complicité, Jane turned her attention to a stage direction in opera and music theatre. Besides forming her own company Soundbodies, Soundmoves, she has collaborated extensively with companies including Opera North and Drama per Musica. Jane and Andrew Lawrence-King (The Harp Consort) have worked together on a range of Baroque music theatre projects, and have a series of new projects in the pipeline including the forthcoming Window to the Soul involving a cast of blind opera singers.

She has held a number of visiting posts across the globe, including Hong Kong Institute of Education, University of New South Wales, Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London), Luzern Konservatorium (Switzerland), Aveiro University (Portugal). She currently holds a Chair in Music Performance Studies at University of Sheffield and is the incoming Callaway/Tunley Chair of Music at University of Western Australia. She will divide her time between Sheffield and Perth for the forthcoming 3 years. In her leisure time, Jane is a keen middle distance runner, and enthusiastic vegetarian cook.

Professor Darryl Poulsen
Head of School
Director, Brass Studies

Dr David Symons
Director, Academic Studies and Senior Lecturer

Professor Roger Smalley
Senior Honorary Research Fellow

Professor Roger Smalley studied piano at the Royal College of Music, London, with Anthony Hopkins and composition with Peter Racine Fricker and John White. He also took composition lessons with Alexander Goehr and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1968 he was appointed first Artist-in-Residence at King’s College, Cambridge.

Top of Page

Dr Jonathan McIntosh
Associate Lecturer, Ethnomusicology

A native of Inverness, Scotland, Jonathan McIntosh holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in ethnomusicology, music and social anthropology from the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. Specialising in the performing arts of Bali, Indonesia, his doctoral thesis focused upon children’s practice and performance of dance, music and song. During fieldwork for this project he worked with children and teenagers who attended a Balinese dance studio (sanggar tari) where he also studied and performed various male, female and transgender dances. In addition, he holds performance diplomas in flute from the Royal Schools of Music, and is a formal principal flute player with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (NYOS), and a member of Camerata Scotland.

Jonathan’s research interests include: Balinese music and dance; children’s songs and music making; socialisation; youth music cultures; Central Javanese gamelan; Balinese gamelan gong kebyar; Balinese gamelan gender wayang; applied ethnomusicology; hypermedia in ethnomusicology, and community music making.

In the School of Music at UWA, Jonathan co-ordinates ethnomusicology units for music students and students in other degree courses concerning the history and theory of ethnomusicology, fieldwork methods and practice in ethnomusicology, the music and dance of Southeast Asia, and popular music and culture.

Top of Page

Peter Moore OAM
Director, Wind Studies

Peter Moore graduated from Trinity College of Music, London, with teaching and performing diplomas in both bassoon and piano. After completing his studies he freelanced with most of the British orchestras and broadcast regularly on BBC Radio with the Scottish Virtuosi Chamber Ensemble. For nine years he was co-principal bassoon in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and performed in major festivals throughout the world with leading conductors and soloists. He was also in great demand as a conductor and worked extensively with British Youth Orchestras. In 1983 he won a Scottish Arts Council award to further his conducting career.

Paul Wright
Director, String Studies

As an exponent of both the modern and the eighteenth century violin, Paul Wright is one of Australia's most versatile instrumentalists. Paul was born in Adelaide in 1959. At the age of 8 he began violin studies with Lyndall Hendrickson and, three years later, was awarded a place at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England. He went on to study at the Guildhall School in London, and in 1978 was accepted as a student at the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied under Ivan Galamian.

Graeme Gilling
Coordinator, Keyboard Studies

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Graeme studied the piano with Iola Shelley - one of New Zealand's foremost pianists - and composition at the University of Canterbury, completing a Bachelor of Music with Honours in Composition. In 1983, he came to Western Australia to pursue postgraduate studies in piano accompaniment with Roger Smalley at the University of Western Australia. After completing his Masters Degree in 1985, Graeme free-lanced as a recitalist and teacher, working with many distinguished international artists such as Gerald English, Raphael Wallfisch, Bonita Boyd, Michel Debost, Jane Rutter and Gordon Hunt as well as with students of all ages.

In 1995, Graeme was appointed to the staff of the School of Music at the University of Western Australia as Accompanist, and became Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at the beginning of 1998 - performing, teaching and adjudicating regularly in conjunction with his activities as a performer.

Top of Page

Dr Suzanne Wijsman
Senior Lecturer, String Studies

Cellist Suzanne Wijsman was born in the USA and received her formal musical education at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Eastman School of Music, earning the degrees BMus, MMus and Doctor of Musical Arts in violoncello performance and literature. Her cello teachers included Paul Katz, Jane Cowan, Steven Doane and Richard Kapuscinski. She also received a BA with Highest Honors in Religion from Oberlin College, and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, where she was the recipient of Rackham and Cameron Fellowships.

The recipient of a Fulbright Award for study at the International Cello Centre (UK), Suzanne has performed extensively in the USA, Australia and Europe, in chamber music or as recitalist. In the USA she was a member of the Augustine String Quartet from 1985-1989, which won prizes in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Cleveland Quartet Competition, was a semi-finalist at the 1989 Banff International String Quartet Competition, and twice received fellowships to the Aspen Centre for Advanced Quartet Studies, as well as the Yale summer school at Norfolk. Her chamber music studies were with members of the Cleveland, Tokyo and Juilliard Quartets.
From 1990-96, Suzanne played with the acclaimed Stirling String Quartet, which toured several times in Australia for Musica Viva, internationally to Italy and South Korea, and presented frequent concerts and ABC radio broadcasts. She also served as a lecturer as the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music, and was invited to serve as a visiting faculty member at the Eastman School of Music in 1992.

Since joining the staff of the School of Music in 1997, Suzanne has performed often as a member of Ensemble Arcangelo, Western Australia’s premier early music group, as well as in numerous local chamber music concerts. She was a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music article on the cello, and her research interests include the early history of the violin family, 17th and 18th- century historical performance practice, and musicians’ health issues. She is currently a chief investigator in two funded research projects: The Biomechanics of Cello Bowing (UWA) and The French Baroque Music Project (ARC Linkage), which is in the process of recording a series of CDs of 18th-century French repertoire for ABC Classics to be released beginning in 2007.

Top of Page

Dr Nicholas Bannan
Lecturer, Music Education

Nicholas Bannan's earliest musical experience was as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral. He went on to study Music at Cambridge University, where he specialised in vocal studies and composition. He has taught in several schools, including Eton College. He was Director of Music at Desborough School, Maidenhead, where the choir he conducted was in demand to work with London orchestras and made frequent broadcasts on television and radio. He continued to develop his work as a composer, winning the Fribourg Prize for Sacred Music in 1986 and completing commissions for the Allegri and Grieg Quartets, the Guildhall String Ensemble, Cantemus Novum of Antwerp, and the Gentlemen of St Paul's Cathedral. He was for 12 years the conductor of The Esterhazy Singers, a London chamber choir that specialised in performing the music of Haydn and his contemporaries with the period instruments of the Esterhazy Chamber Orchestra. He also directed the contemporary music groups 1913 Ensemble and Act of Creation, and worked on electro-acoustic projects with the composer Rolf Gehlhaar and the Elektrodome company. He was a Winston Churchill Fellow in 1992, travelling through the USA in preparing a report on the training of choral directors and singing teachers.

His interests as an educator focused increasingly on means of releasing children's creativity, and he formed the partnership Compose Yourself! to provide workshop opportunities for pupils and in-service training for teachers. He carried out research at the University of Reading into the use of electronic resources in vocal education and the means by which vocal potential can be released in singers of all ages and abilities, and this has led to his Harmony Signing project, a new pedagogical system for developing aural sensitivity and creative potential through group singing. He has also worked with Alzheimer’s patients on the potential of singing for retaining social communication between carers and people with dementia. He was awarded his doctorate in 2002 for a study of the evolutionary origins of the human singing voice. From 1999 to 2005 he was Director of the Music Teaching in Professional Practice Initiative, a distance-learning programme leading to Diploma and Masters qualifications administered at the University of Reading.

Nicholas was founder-editor of the journal Mastersinger published by the Association of British Choral Directors, and Artistic Director of ABCD’s 1996 conference in Oxford. He co-edited the Ashgate publication The Reflective Conservatoire with George Odam, and is currently working with the archaeologist Steven Mithen on an edited book for Oxford University Press entitled Music, Language and Human Evolution. He continues to compose, and brings to his teaching the assumption that the purpose of engaging with the music of the past is to develop the confidence and fluency to enable original self-expression. He is a keen follower of cricket and rugby, both of which he played in his youth.

Andrea Stanberg
Lecturer, Music Education

Andrea is a graduate of both the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (BMusEd 1988) and the University of Toronto (MMus (MusEd) 1998)). She has taught in both public and private schools both in Australia and Singapore. Her last school appointment was as Faculty Head of Music at the Australian International School in Singapore where she established the Music Department.

Andrea’s research interests include: teacher education, creativity, technology in the music classroom, lifelong music education and international education.

In 2001 Andrea moved to Perth to take up the position of Education Coordinator with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and a part time position as the inaugural Education and Artform Officer with the WA Opera Company, before taking up her appointment at UWA Music in 2002.

Top of Page

Dr Robert Faulkner
Research Fellow

Robert Faulkner has recently joined UWA School of Music staff as lecturer in music education from Iceland where he has lived for more than a decade. He has played a leading role there in national curriculum development both in general school music and in community/instrumental music school contexts, especially in areas of children composing and improvising, and in the instigation of the first world music performance project of its kind in Icelandic schools - Zimbabwean marimba, mbira, dance and song - through young people’s peer and near-peer teaching. Robert has been head of a community music school, part-time lecturer in Music Education at the University of Akureyri and the Icelandic Academy of Arts in Reykjavik, and deputy chair of the Icelandic Music Schools Examinations Board since its founding in 2002. He directs both children and adult choirs, notably the male voice choir Hreimur which has sung all over Europe and made several recordings.

Born in England, Robert studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, before obtaining an honours degree in music and licentiate diploma in singing from the Royal Academy of Music. He completed a postgraduate certificate in education at the University of Reading and MA in music psychology at Sheffield University. Robert completed his PhD at Sheffield University with an investigation into vocal identity and the role of singing in Icelandic men’s everyday lives which spans phenomenological psychology, ethnomusicology, music sociology and gender studies.

Apart from articles in leading international journals, based both on his PhD research and research investigating children’s composing, Robert has also written teachers’ handbooks and journal articles in Icelandic. He has given papers and workshops in Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Northern Ireland and Canada.

Emeritus Professor David Tunley
Honorary Senior Research Fellow

David Tunley joined The University of Western Australia in 1958 as the first full-time lecturer in Music. He was appointed to a Personal Chair in 1980 and to the Chair of Music in 1989. As a scholar David Tunley is internationally recognised as the leading authority on the 18th-century French cantata, and his book on the subject has become the classic study. His books and many articles as well as contributions to the New Grove Dictionary and the New Oxford History in Music, cover a wide range of research including French music from the 17th to 19th centuries, Australian and British music in the 20th century and aspects of music education.

Early in his career he received a French Government scholarship to study composition with the celebrated French teacher Nadia Boulanger. He has created various community events such as the York Winter Music Festival which ran for ten years, and more recently the Terrace Proms. He was the founder conductor of the University Collegium Musicum whose annual Christmas Concert is still one of the musical highlights of the year. Recognition of his work has come through the Australian Academy of the Humanities of which he became a Fellow in 1980. He took early retirement in 1994 in order to devote himself more fully to his research and has been an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Music since this time. His most recent publications are 18th century French Cantata (2nd enlarged edition) in 1997 and The Bel Canto Violin: the life and times of Alfredo Campoli, 1906-1993 (1999).

Top of Page

Emeritus Professor Sandra Bowdler
Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Sandra Bowdler was born in Sydney in 1946, and attended the University of Sydney, gaining a BA Hons I with University Medal in Anthropology in 1970. Her honours thesis was based on the excavation of an Aboriginal shell midden site at Bass Point, on the south coast of NSW. She was then appointed Tutor in Prehistory at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, and taught there from 1971-2. During that period she carried out archaeological field work in the Papuan Gulf and also on Motupore Island in Bootless Bay, Port Moresby. In 1973 she was awarded a PhD scholarship in the Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. Her PhD research was based on field work carried out on Hunter Island in Bass Strait.

From 1977 to 1980, Sandra Bowdler was a lecturer in the Department of Prehistory at the University Of New England in Armidale, NSW. During that period, she carried out research in the New England area, including the excavation of an Aboriginal site in her backyard in Uralla. In 1981 she worked for the Forestry Commission of NSW on a project examining issues involved with Aboriginal sites on the Crown-timber lands of NSW, and in 1982 worked as an independent consultant, carrying out projects in Tasmania, NSW and Victoria.

Sandra Bowdler was appointed Professor of Archaeology at the University of WA in 1983, and continued in that position until her retirement in 2007. During that period she carried out a project of archaeological research in the Shark Bay region of WA involving Aboriginal sites dating from 30,000 years ago to the historical period. She also broadened her archaeological horizons to include Southeast Asia, and in recent times has been working with colleague Dr Jane Balme on the origins of gender with particular emphasis on the evidence from the European Palaeolithic (Stone Age). Over her career she has published over a hundred scholarly papers and books.

Music has long been a particular interest in Sandra Bowdler’s life, particularly baroque music and particularly opera. Since 1996, she has been writing music reviews, and some articles, which have appeared largely on the internet sites Andante (www.andante.com, still there but basically defunct) and The Opera Critic (www.theopercritic.com), and also in Amadeus, the Italian music magazine and Opera, the English magazine. She has also become interested in archaeological evidence for the origins of music (an interest shared with Dr Nicholas Bannan). She is currently seeking to establish a Baroque Music Festival, to be held in Perth in 2009.

Top of Page

Dr Chris Tonkin
Lecturer, Composition

Chris Tonkin was born in Perth, Western Australia. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Western Australia (UWA), Rice University (Houston, Texas) and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Several of his works have been premiered at arts festivals and concerts by ensembles and soloists in Australia, Europe, North America and Asia. In 2004/2005 he spent a year at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris and has since focused on interactive pieces for live performers and computer, developing several works in following years at the Centre for Research in Computing in the Arts (CRCA) in San Diego, California. In January 2008 he returned to Australia to take up a position at the School of Music at UWA as Lecturer and Coordinator of Composition and Music Technology.

Top of Page