Stephen Crump

Steve Crump is an elected (2019) full writer member of Australian Performing Rights
Association Ltd (APRA / AMCOS) and in 2021 was awarded Associate Membership of the
Australian Music Centre. He is also a member of Music Tasmania. He has a number of
solo and collaborative music albums, stocked by leading Independent stores in Tasmania,
Victoria and NSW, as well as Plato records in Europe. His music totals more than 100 pieces on 15
CDs / Download card and video. I love the lyrical quality of Steve's music.  Steve’s music often expresses his love of the natural world. In 2023, Steve’s ensemble music “Winter Night at Liffey” was used on the soundtrack of the The Giants, a film about the beauty and unique value of Tasmania’s native forests intertwined with the life of environmentalist Bob Brown; this documentary has since won numerous national and international awards. Steve regularly collaborates with ARIA award winner, Monique Brumby, performing together live at the Festival of Voices, Theatre Royal Hobart in 2021 and again in 2025; melding neo-classical expression with Monique’s pop sensibilities – best illustrated by “Walk That Beach Again” about remote Tasmanian wilderness (See live video on my website). 

In 2023, Steve began a series of collaborations with Naarah, Young Australian of the Year 2024 for
Tasmania, proud Gija woman from the Kimberley, now performing in musical theatre in London. The
basis for this collaboration was Naarah randomly picking up a book in Steve’s music room and
selecting a poem or prose at random, to which she’d sing as Steve improvised a melody. The results
are found on my website and/or stream “So You Will Hear Me”. Steve also collaborates with Jabra
Latham and Richard Vella orchestrating Steve’s piano pieces. These have been recorded for various
projects, streamed and hard copies, with a selection offered here through TSO Publishing. For
example, Forest Suite was reviewed on FM radio as “a strong classical piece” and was requested for
the University of Western Australia Library collection. Sean Lowry identified early on how Crump
clearly possesses a richly accessible sense of melody and compositional craftsmanship
(exemplifying) his ability to marry a productive tension between a liberal use of catchy melodies and a non-pretentious display of musical sophistication. 

Steve’s major project since 2019 has been to compose music to express the emotions and
experiences of the life journey of Dr Bob Brown, Australia’s most respected environmentalist. The
result, But then … is an audiobiography in two volumes exploring the shifts in Bob’s thinking and
decisions as something new (but then) arose. Bob stated he used writing poetry ‘to make sense of the world’ and, with Bob’s blessing, Steve added musical colour to Bob’s evocative, honest and
sometimes amusing images and anecdotes. John Lamp (The Pulse, 94.7 FM) reviewed their
collaboration noting how Leonard Cohen has been described as a poet who writes music. But he
had the advantage of working with his own material as do others who have taken up this
challenge. Steve Crump took up that challenge without the benefit of having written the poems
and has nailed it. 

Overall, Steve has composed music to more than 40 of Bob’s poems, totalling
nearly 100 minutes of audio, easily accessible at www.bobbrownaudiobiography.com
Peter Costelloe, graduate of UTAS Conservatorium of Music summed up Steve’s music as, I hear
them as romanticism meeting haiku. Of course ‘haiku’ is a three line poetry form but all Steve’s pieces seem to be able to deliver their message in a concise way, unlike the romantics, and I consider that a strength indeed – a modern romanticism. Apart from the Festival of Voices, Steve has performed twice for the Ten Days on The Island Festival and multiple times for the Cygnet Folk Festival, all in Tasmania, Along the way, he composed the theme music to a blog, videos and a 3D animation. Steve is grateful to the Hobart / Tasmanian music community whose talents and generosity combine to help him make international standard recordings of his work and collaborations.

https://www.stevecrumpmusic.com/