Andrew Garton - History

History

Since the mid-1970s Andrew Garton participated in numerous independent and community media initiatives in Australia and South East Asia: from radio and public access video in his teens to computer networking in the late 1980s and 1990s with Pegasus Networks. Garton was motivated at an early age towards collaborative media art works, combining interests in music, performance and public media. In the past twenty-five years he has written and performed plays, joined and formed bands, written scores for television documentaries, penned countless songs, piano and electronic compositions, experimented with recording and performance techniques.

Andrew began composing music in the late 1970s and studied composition with composer and pianist, Sykes Rose in the early 1980s. Andrew went on to perform, write and record with numerous bands, ensembles and free improvisation groups most notably Private Lives, Astrobeatniks, Lingo Babel, White Punks on Hope and Back from Nowhere.

In the mid-80s Andrew began composing for film and stage. He completed scores for numerous documentaries produced by UK's Channel 4 and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), most notably, the award winning Anyone Can be A Genius and In Grave Danger of Falling Food, a three part series investigating the life-time work of Permaculture founder, Bill Mollison.

Andrew's music for theatre is largely focused on his own solo works and spoken-word operas (Black Harlequin, Auslaender und Staatenlose), with commissions for Queensland's Omniscient Gallery and the Debacle Theater Company, most notably their landmark interpretation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (1994).