About Joshua McHugh
I am a composer, music educator, videographer, animator and multimedia editor at Pama Language Centre. I work with First Nations communities around Cape York Peninsula creating songs and video productions to help teaching and learning of ancestral languages.
Before working at Pama Language Centre I was a keyboard skills lecturer at ANU, a silent film accompanist at NFSA, and freelance composer. My music has been performed as far south as Antarctica and as far North as Vienna Austria.
While lecturing at the Australian National University School of Music, I developed and trialled my piano method on an undergraduate class of keyboard skills students. Since then, I have refined and published my method “Which Finger Where?” into a collection of books suitable for beginner to advanced students.
I graduated with first class Honours at the Australian National University School of Music winning the Bernhard Neumann Memorial Prize.
In 2013 I completed my post graduate studies in Film Music Composition at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School “AFTRS” in Sydney. There I studied Orchestration under Christopher Gordon, Electronic Music under Kirke Godfrey and Screen Music Techniques under Martin Armiger.
Commissioned works include:
– Edward and Astrid (Working Title, Opera/Theatre/Ballet hybrid still in production 2018) commissioned by Ben Connor & The Street Theatre.
– “Grimm and the Blue Crown Owl”, an Opera commissioned by the Australian National University. The opera premiered at the Canberra Street Theatre to sell out audiences, and later won the Canberra Area Theatre Award for Best Original Work.
– 13Tradie radio advertisement. Rock Ensemble. Currently airing on FM 104.7 and Mix 106 Canberra.
– 52 pieces depicting the 52 phonetic speech sounds of music, for flute, violin and piano. Commissioned by Katherine Beauchamp for the New Literacy Program.
Important Teachers Mentors and Colleagues of mine in no particular order: