Michael Barkl

Michael Barkl was born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1958 into a musical family.[1] He learnt classical piano from the age of seven, later becoming obsessed with the electric guitar after hearing the album Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsys as a teenager.[2] From rock guitar he expanded his interests into jazz guitar, and then into bass guitar and double bass.[3] At the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music he initially studied jazz improvisation with Roger Frampton, and followed this with degree studies in composition with Vincent Plush, Martin Wesley-Smith, Warren Burt, Ross Edwards, Don Banks and Graham Hair.[4] Postgraduate studies in composition and musicology were with Ann Ghandar, Gerald Florian Messner, Richard Toop and Greg Schiemer.[5] He graduated with a master's degree in composition (University of New England (Australia)) and doctorates in musicology (Deakin University) and electronic music (University of Wollongong).[6]

After working as a freelance bass player, Barkl joined TAFE NSW in 1987 as foundation head of its contemporary music section.[7][8][9] During this time he contributed a series of biographies of Australian composers to The Oxford Companion to Australian Music, A Dictionary of Australian Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[10][11][12] Further publications documented the compositional techniques of Franco Donatoni[13] and Riccardo Formosa,[14] explored aspects of the cultural context of music composition,[15][16] and described the process of electronic music composition using the program Pure Data;[17][18][19] he also published educational texts on composition,[20] harmonic analysis[21] and improvisation,[22] and a volume of memoirs.[23] From 1997 Barkl was foundation Adviser (later, Chief Examiner) of Contemporary Popular Music for the Australian Music Examinations Board.[24][25]

Barkl's music exhibits a combination of influences from European styled modernism to jazz.[26][27] An early work, Rota (1981) for piano trio, is clearly influenced by twentieth century Italian music, specifically Franco Donatoni.[28] Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was awarded segnalata in the 1981 International Valentino Bucchi Composition Competition.[29] A pair of subsequent orchestral works, Voce di testa (1981) and Voce di petto (1982), while maintaining the Italian association through their titles, added more jazz influence, however slight.[30][31] Drumming (1983) was characterised as "an exciting piano piece", "bring[ing] together Indian tabla drumming with jazz pianism",[32] while Ballade (1984) for six instruments, structured as a reverie interrupting a café piano solo, brought Barkl to the attention of the critics, Roger Covell describing him "one of the most musical of younger Australian composers".[33] Subsequent works, such as Cabaret for orchestra, Blues for bass clarinet and percussion (based on a Charlie Parker riff), Disco for percussion quartet, Red for recorder (based on Jimi Hendrix’s Red House) and Smoky for harpsichord, developed Barkl’s jazz-inspired instrumental style[34][35] until a complete change emerged with a series of lengthy electronic works composed using the open source patching language Pure Data.[36] These used large banks of computer generated oscillators to build thick textures of sine waves, saturating the aural space.

Michael Barkl was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours (Australia) for "service to the performing arts and music education".[37]

• https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/barkl-michael Retrieved 19 June 2019.