​Andrée Greenwell is a multi-award winning composer and performance maker, who works across the Australian performing arts, screen and radio. Her catalogue of over 100 scores includes credits for Australia’s leading performing arts organisations including Sydney Theatre Company, Symphony Australia, Australian Dance Theatre, Bell Shakespeare, Belvoir and Queensland Music Festival.  She fearlessly crosses boundaries in her music making - drawing from art music, particularly post-minimalism, as well as popular music subcultures, and the cinematic score. 

Her ground-breaking chamber opera Sweet Death, described by ABC Classic FM's John Crawford as a "baptism of fire" was commissioned by Melbourne Festival, produced by Chamber Made Opera in 1991, and broadcast on the ABC.

As Artistic Director and Composer of Green Room Music (GRM), Andrée Greenwell is a leading force in the creation of independent music theatre, chamber opera and multidisciplinary works in Australia. Here, she has championed many Australian women writers, creative artists, vocalists and musicians. Four of her long-form works have been presented by Sydney Opera House.

Her major works include Dreaming Transportation, The Hanging of Jean Lee, Laquiem: Tales from the Mourning of the Lac Women, The Villainelles and Gothic, which have variously been presented at Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, Performance Space at Carriageworks, Riverside Parramatta, Arts House and the Arts Centre, Melbourne. 

Andrée's acclaimed experimental concept album/podcast Listen to Me made in response to the crisis of violence against women, involving 8 Australian writers and 12 musicians, was broadcast on FBi's 'All the Best' in July 2018. Her groundbreaking short films Medusahead: a video opera clip for decapitated soprano and 3D animated snakes and Laquiem were altogether presented at 23 film festivals worldwide and purchased for broadcast by Arte France, Kunst Kanal Holland and SBS Australia. 

Through receipt of the prestigious Australia Council for the Arts Music Fellowship, Andrée commenced the chamber opera Three Marys with a libretto by Dr Christine Evans. Sydney Opera House presented the premier season of Three Marys as part of its Unwrapped program, May 11-13, 2023. It is now streaming here on the Sydney Opera House website as part of 50:50, fifty films celebrating the iconic building.

Select awards and achievements

Finalist (current), Australian Women in Music Awards, Opera Australia Impact Award, 2024;
Awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Music Fellowship, 2018-19;
Project Fellowship, Australia Council for the Arts for a studio recording of Gothic​, 2016;
Honorary Post Doctoral Fellow, UoW, 2015; 
Green Room Award 'Best Score' for the music theatre work Venus and Adonis, Bell Shakespeare/Malthouse, 2009;
Best Post-Graduate Composition, Fellowship of Australian Composers, 2006;
Australian Postgraduate Award 2004-6;
NSW Women in Arts Fellowship 2003;
Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust traveling scholar 2002;
Artist residency, Chateau de La Napoule, France, 2002.
 
Key presentation engagements:

Participant, Women Opera Makers Workshop, Académie, Festival of Aix-en-Provence, led by UK director Katie Mitchell, 2024;
Plenary address at Le Conte Musical et l'Opéra pour enfants dans le Monde Anglophone, Université de Caen, 2023;
ITI Music Theatre Workshop, Munich, 2004; 
As delegate/panelist: ISCM World Music Days 2000;
Panellist at Visionlines, Aarhus Festival, 1998;

Andrée was a Board and Programming Committee Member, 2nd Women Composers Festival, Malthouse, Melbourne, 1993.

Full biography

​Photographs by Katerina Stratos


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