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Timothy Constable

Percussion

Christine Bishop Chair

Biography

Timothy Constable is an award-winning percussionist and composer, and has been a member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra since 2014. A compelling, creative and sensitive performer, he has performed as concerto and chamber music soloist at most of the Australian classical music festivals, as well as in New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, UK, Ireland, Senegal, USA, China, Korea, Nepal and South-East Asia.

He was the artistic director of Synergy Percussion between 2009 and 2017, during which time the group undertook some of its most ambitious work, including the 40th anniversary season in 2014, and extensive collaboration with renowned ensemble Noreum Machi (South Korea), commissions of music by Steve Reich and Anthony Pateras, several recordings and the video project 40under40.

His commissions have include compositions for Omer Backley-Astrachan (Maholohet Festival, Israel) and Orava String Quartet (Australian Festival of Chamber Music), as well as Cinemusica (Australian Chamber Orchestra), Ordinary Time and Spirals (Southern Cross Soloists), and numerous works for Noreum Machi, Synergy Percussion and Taikoz. Contemporary dance score credits include Meryl Tankard, Shaun Parker, Legs on the Wall and Dance Makers Collective.

He is committed to both new and ancient music, with a large body of world and Australasian premieres to his name, including Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet, György Ligeti’s Síppal, Dobbal, Nádihegedüvel (With Pipes, Drums and Fiddles), Anthony Pateras’ Beauty Will Be Amnesiac Or Will Not Be At All and Flesh and Ghost, and music by Simon Holt, Lisa Lim, Arvo Pärt and Gerard Brophy among others. In the realm of ancient music, he has studied with Senegalese master drummer Aly N’Dyiaye Rose and Korean Jangoo with Kim Yeong-Taek and Kim Chong-Hee.

Timothy Constable is a Freedman music fellow, an Elizabethan Theatre Trust scholar, a university medallist of Newcastle University, and a graduate of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.