Martin Wesley-Smith - Musical Career

Musical Career

Wesley-Smith returned to Australia from England in 1974 to teach composition and electronic music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Here he founded and directed its Electronic Music Studio. He established the first computer music studio in China at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1986, and he taught at the University of Hong Kong in 1994-5. He retired from the Conservatorium in 2000.

From the start Wesley-Smith has been eclectic in his composition. He created an early Moog #3 piece in 1970 called Vietnam Image. At the same time he composed songs for children's radio and television programs. He was able to "write, sing and record real tunes, as well as esoteric orchestral and chamber music". An interviewer in 2005 describes his eclecticism as follows: "there aren't many composers that I can think of anywhere in the world who have the breadth of activity that you have, writing songs for Playschool and writing pieces for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and writing music theatre pieces and writing straight out agit-prop".

Wesley-Smith often works with his wordsmith twin-brother, Peter ("Ira to his George").

He is particularly known for the political content of his work:

"Moved by events in newspapers and news bulletins, he peopled and peppered his works with references to urgent international issues - Vietnam, Afghanistan, Timor and now West Papua - and with pointed, pithy commentaries on things like pesticides, media doublespeak, and global warming".

However, while much of his work is serious, often dealing with tragic issues and events, it also incorporates humour, usually in the form of satire and irony. He said in an interview in 2005:

...I think it's very effective if you can get people laughing and crying at the same time, or in some of the audio-visual things, there's something very beautiful and yet it's incredibly sad at the same time, they seems to be contradictory emotions but in fact one enhances the other, so I'm very conscious of that. If we can find these moments where you're laughing and suddenly think, 'Oh I shouldn't be laughing, this is serious', it can be a very powerful response in someone.

In addition to his works on political issues, he has also composed a number of works inspired by the life and works of English writer, Lewis Carroll.