Tim Hansen

Tim Hansen is a multi-disciplinary artist, with a professional career spanning 20 years in the fields of music and theatre. He is a composer, songwriter, cabaret performer, actor, educator, and advocate for the Arts as a vital means for social justice and social cohesion. He currently lives on Wiradjuri country in Australia.

Tim’s style draws from a lifetime of eclectic music tastes and a deep fascination for how music ‘works’. As a result, Tim’s music and songs can trace their lineage to anything from German cabaret to 21st Century Post-Minimalism, from contemporary music theatre to classic jazz, the most bubble-gum of pop to the weirdest experimental music. If it works, it works.

Much of Tim’s work is a fusion of music and theatre, and his biggest works draw from his two strengths. “The Sharpest Piece” (2017), a song cycle commissioned by Hourglass Ensemble, a gothic work about a woman who believes she is made of glass. “Airlock” (2018), a cabaret of original songs about the end of the world, written in response to the Same-Sex Marriage plebiscite in Australia that year. “Schapelle Schapelle” (2019), a comedy musical about the media’s role in dehumanising the controversial drug-smuggler Schapelle Corby. “Fast Cars” (2023), a comedy with music examining the world-famous Bathurst 1000 V8 car race and the nostalgic place it holds in the town of Bathurst. He currently performs original tunes under his cabaret alter-ego, Tim Handsome.

A core component of Tim’s practice is engaging with young people, and he believes that access to music education and artistic expression is a fundamental right of every young person. He is currently engaged with Musica Viva as part of their “Musician in the Classroom” program, working in a primary school in an area of socio-economic disadvantage, teaching the teachers how to teach music to their students. He was composer in residence at Santa Sabina College for seven years, and has tutored with a number of youth-arts organisations around Australia including Australian Theatre for Young People, Music for Everyone, and Canberra Youth Theatre.

Tim is a passionate believer in the arts as a means to address issues of social justice, and has worked with organisations such as Milk Crate Theatre and Shopfront Youth Theatre to do so. By giving artistic access and therefore a voice to segments of the community that are forced into invisibility, such as those who have experienced homelessness, discrimination, or stigmatism due to mental health issues, Tim believes we can make steps towards healing those wounds and move forward as a society to address larger issues that affect us all, such as wealth inequality and climate change. 

Tim actively promotes art, music and celebration in the wider community, through producing festivals and large-scale arts events. He is currently program manager for Percussion Australia, managing Taikoz and Synergy Percussion, co-founder of two new music collectives in New York (W4 New Music and ExhAust New Music), and has produced one-off events in Sydney, Canberra, and NSW Central West. Tim also ran in the 2019 NSW State Election with Keep Sydney Open, a campaign designed to put political pressure on the incumbent government to address the decline of the music industry in Sydney due to poor arts policy.

In 2018 Tim was a finalist in the Vanda and Young Songwriting competition, one of 40 shortlisted artists from over four thousand entries. Residencies include Artist in Residence at the Red Rattler Theatre, the New Musicals Australia program at the Hayes Theatre, composition fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, the Norfolk Contemporary Music Festival, the Avaloch New Music Institute, and twice artist-in-residence at Hill End, NSW.

Tim holds a BA (Communications) Theatre/Media (1st Class Hons) from CSU, a BMus (Music Composition) from ANU, and a MMus (Music Theory and Composition) from NYU.