Rate My Professor Mark Pollard

Pollard's compositional style is eclectic, incorporating improvisation, jazz, pop, and indigenous musics of South East Asia. Key works include the Bass Clarinet Concerto (2003) for Harry Sparnaay, Electric Guitar Concerto (2007) premiered at the Darwin International Guitar Festival, Beating the Rusty Nail for violin and piano (2008) at the Perth International Arts Festival, Gunnai Dreaming for choir (2009) at the Parliament of the World's Religions, Silent Spring: five symphonic images (2012) for his University of Melbourne Doctor of Music submission, and The Heavenly Muzak Machine: six miniatures for vibraphone eight hands (2010) commissioned by Speak Percussion. Site-specific compositions feature prominently, such as Sounding the Earth for the Melbourne Museum, Sounding Out Andy for the National Gallery of Victoria, and Resonating Spaces projects at the Ian Potter Museum of Art (2013), Melbourne Zoo (2014), and internationally in Vancouver, Edinburgh, Beijing, Singapore, and the Cook Islands. His music has been released on nine compact discs, including A Handful of Rain, a collection of ambient works, and performed at major festivals like Warsaw Autumn and Tokyo Nova. Awards include the inaugural Jacobena Angliss Music Award (1983), Albert H. Maggs Composition Award first prize for View from the Beach (1992), Spivakovsky Composition Prize (1993), inaugural VCA Teaching Excellence Award (2001), VCA Incredible Colleague Award (2006), AMC/APRA Classical Music State Award (2008), and University of Melbourne Universitas21 Teaching Fellowship (2009). He has mentored composers such as Anthony Lyons and Andrián Pertout, delivered a keynote speech at the 2011 Conference for Inter-disciplinary Musicology in Glasgow, and served as guest composer-in-residence at Green College, Vancouver.