Martin Macklerras is a composer of large-scale, innovative and exciting orchestral works. His two movement orchestral work Beauty and Beauty was played by the State orchestra of Victoria, and the 3 movement wind symphony, I Hear Robins a Great Way Off was played by the Melbourne Conservatorium wind symphony. His 40-minute work for Clarinet and piano Elegy, was premiered at the Hanson Dyer auditorium with Danae Killian on piano and the composer on clarinet. The work was recorded and will enjoy 2 releases, one by Move Records and a second remix available through Bandcamp.
Mackerras is currently composing a piano concerto with large orchestra for pianist Danee Killian. This is scheduled to be completed in mid 2027, this will be his most epic, innovative work to date.
Mackerras was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, which allowed him to study in New York with the legendary clarinettist Charles Neidich and attend the class of French composer Pierre Charvet. On returning to Melbourne, he continued with his need to create unique performance experiences; he toured and recorded his own Martin Mackerras Ensemble and was commissioned to write a large-scale piano work for Michael Kieran Harvey. This culminated in the CD recording As all the Heavens were a Bell and The Waves in 2005.
As a clarinettist, he has played in many bands and ensembles, including Melbourne New Music under Roland Peelman and Bucket Rider for the Melbourne Festival. Laura Jean, Sally Seltmann, Ross Mclennan and Choo Dikka Dikka with John Rodgers. Recordings of his childhood band Tangled Sholeces, which he formed at age 12 with his brother and sister, were released as the album Turn My Dial by Chapter Records in 2021.
Mackerras studied at the Queensland Conservatorium and was also a member of the Queensland Youth Orchestra throughout his teenage years. He then studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, Manhattan School of muisc and is currently finishing a Master’s in Composition with Elliott Gyger and Melody Eotvos at the Melbourne Conservatorium of music.
He lives in the Yarra Ranges on a mountainside with a dog named Seigfried.
As All the Heavens were a Bell and The Waves (2005)
As always in Martin Mackerras’s music, the evocation of timelessness holds sway. The ocean’s forgotten depths and her shimmering, hopeful horizon are the dimensions of the human soul in its inner eternity, rising and sinking incessantly, the perpetual undulations resolving to the stillness of pure tone, as though the soul were a vibrating string…as though the soul were a lyre…The piano strives to become its entelechy, the lyre of waves. In the beginning was the ocean.
….Martin beholds the world with the untarnished wonder of a child who feels intuitively how in the ocean waves are not accidental transmissions of energy, but essential inner character. In this, ocean waves are like musical tones
Danaë Killian , writer and pianist
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Mackerras homes in on the extremes , the epiphany , the total energy. His clarinet improvisation is a frenzied vault at the physical extremes of the instrument, reaching out to a higher consciousness.
Harriet Cunnigham, Real Time
