Simon Barber

Over the course of my career, my musical influences have shifted in ways that continue to shape my compositional voice. In recent years I have found myself increasingly influenced, and continually challenged, by the thinking and music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Earlier in my development, the harmonic and structural ideas of twentieth-century composers such as Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, and Pierre Boulez played a defining role, while prior to and during my formal studies the energy and immediacy of pop and rock music provided an important creative impetus.

Two Tasmanian composers, Don Kay and Simon Reade, have been especially significant in my musical life. Don Kay’s work revealed to me the palpable impact that extra-musical forces, geography, environment, locality, and the living presence of flora and fauna can exert on musicial expression. I studied with Don Kay during his final teaching years at the Hobart Conservatorium of Music (1995–1998), establishing a friendship that endures to this day. Simon Reade, a fellow student from the same cohort, has also remained a longstanding collaborator and close friend; his music continues to inspire me with its encyclopedic scope and poetic brevity. Reade has conducted and performed my works for more than thirty years, both locally and interstate, in amateur and professional contexts, an ongoing connection that forms one of my primary musical links to Tasmania/Lutruwita.

Since leaving Tasmania in 2000 and settling in Germany in early 2002, the historical and cultural imprint of my home country has become increasingly resonant in my work. Between 2018 and 2024, while based in Berlin, I composed a series of pieces that engage directly with Tasmanian locations, many of which carry palawa kani names, an exploration of place, memory, and identity that continues to inform my artistic output.