Dr Christopher Sainsbury

In 2020 Christopher Sainsbury was the winner of what is arguably Australia's highest music award, the APRA Art Music Inaugural National Luminary Award, which was awarded for effecting an overdue cultural and practical change in the landscape of our classical music sector through the Ngarra-burria First Peoples Composers program.

As a composer Christopher Sainsbury has made a sustained contribution to Australian music since the mid-1980s. As an educational manager he worked for 23 years as the Head of Arts & Media at the Eora Centre—an Indigenous Tertiary College in Sydney. He is a composer of mixed heritage including Australian Indigenous heritage, and artfully articulates this in some of his works. 

Early career commissions were from the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) in 1987, leading instrumentalists (eg; Australian flute elder Gordon Yemm) in 1987, the Newcastle Bi-centenary Authority in 1988, and more. This has sustained through until today with recent commissions from the Friends of Chopin Australia in 2018, works for the Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF) in 2019 and 2021, for our nation's flagship choir The Australian Voices in 2020, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra 2020, Victorian Opera 2023, and the ABC Classic label released an album of his music performed by members of the Melbourne University Conservatorium Faculty led by Associate Professor Ken Murray in 2024.

Sainsbury bases himself in professional, regional and community music arenas. At times he explores Regionalism and Indigenous narratives through composition, as well as surf music in popular and orchestral compositions, and he writes much for the contemporary classical guitar. He maintains an active career as a guitarist and in 2020 published a new CD (Ocean Song) with Australia's most recorded jazz guitarist of the 1980s - 2000s Dr Guy Strazz. 

He is the founder and artistic director for Ngarra-burria: First Peoples Composers (earlier known as the Indigenous Composers Initiative). This is a major national initiative that is having positive impact on a national and international level. See link here: https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/christopher-sainsbury-wins-major-indigenous-composer-grant/ 

Major existing publications include music compositions, a Platform Paper 'Ngarra-burria: New Music and the Search for An Australian Sound' through Currency House Sydney, and he was co-author for a Chapter in the 2nd edition of the Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia. Publications in 2024 include a co-authored chapter in the Routledge book Decolonising and Indigenising Music Education: First Peoples Leading Research and Practice - see link: https://www.routledge.com/Decolonising-and-Indigenising-Music-Education-First-Peoples-Leading-Research-and-Practice/Rakena-Hall-Prest-Johnson/p/book/9781032265766 

and a co-authored chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia – see link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-music-in-australia/13A9DCE14F63846DD83E1A5C10B9BFBD 

Dip Mus - Composition (1984-86), BA - Comp (1988), Grad Dip Ed (1991), M Mus - Comp (1999-2000), PhD (2009 - 2012)

• Regionalism in music composition
• Australian Indigenous music in the C21st
• Contemporary guitar composition and notation
• Surf music
• Culturally-informed Indigenous education