Lee Bradshaw, composer
It was Lee Bradshaw who revealed to us that he very nearly didn’t apply to our Composer Development Program because he didn’t really see himself as “emerging”. We were shocked. Such a great composer with real craft and knowledge of the string quartet canon - exactly the kind of composer we were after! Through many subsequent discussions with members of the composition community, we overhauled our composer programs to make sure composers like Lee, who really know their chamber music, would be more inclined to apply.
This is Lee’s story.
“I can’t understate the impact the Flinders’ Composer Development Programme (CDP) has had not only on my career, but on my life in a broader sense.
Submitting a work in the first instance was a sliding door moment for me. I definitely had a struggle with the concept of ‘developing’ after so many years composing and in the wider music industry as a songwriter/producer, but not engaging with musicians or the public with my own music meant I needed to do something.
And thank goodness I did.
I had spent some 20-odd years in a fairly unrelated area of the music world, and after some personal reflection, I realised that what I wanted to show for myself was that I needed to really return to composing.
The work I nearly didn’t submit was on the verge of being thrown in the bin - which brings me back to the idea of a ‘sliding door moment’ - and whilst I believe I would have found my way to where I’m going eventually, the exponential flow on from working with Flinders has been game changing.
I had been making moves with various projects and collaborations in Europe, but to have that activity mirrored here in my own backyard has some kind of esoteric value that is difficult to summarise.
It’s one thing to believe in your creative mission, but the external acknowledgement that I was doing something credible and worthwhile has an incalculable effect.
From the perspective of having worked with all kinds of musicians of the highest calibre (including the best contemporary and jazz musicians in Australia), Flinders are simply some of the finest people you can hope to collaborate with. Their objectives are clear, their curiosity is genuine, and their passion for the Quartet repertoire is serious. Composers of all levels of education and/or experience stand to gain an inestimable benefit from any amount of time with this group.
The ‘classical music industry’ has a number of invisible barriers that have been firmly established by various cultural oligarchs and cliques, and Flinders work at penetrating them all in the most meaningful way. They are not obsessed with quota for its own sake, but equitable outcomes of only the highest artistic standards. Their preference has one criteria - excellence - no matter who you are.
Since the CDP I have worked again with Flinders, and separately with Wilma Smith (FQ violinist) on an arrangement of Beethoven’s 5th for String Quintet, which lead to further relationship building, additional performances of that work and an involvement in a new concert series here in Melbourne, as well as a major commission (which is yet to be announced publicly).
This activity here in Australia has enabled me to further galvanise my projects overseas and, despite the pandemic, I have recently signed a recording agreement with a US based recording label and produced a disc of my chamber string music (dating back to 2003) with Baiba Skride, Harriet Krijgh and Ivan Vukčević at EMIL Studios Berliner; had a premiere of my concert Overture “Letters from Montenegro” at the Mediterranean Notes Festival in Tivat (2021) which also featured Bosnian singer Amira Medunjanin (for whom I orchestrated and arranged all her material for the same event); received several new commissions and a number of premieres and recordings in Europe.
2020/21 have been my most productive years compositionally, and economically speaking, I have stepped up into making composition my full-time business. I have (pound-for-pound) been able to generate more income doing the thing I am most passionate about than anything else I’ve ever spent time doing over the years.”
Lee Bradshaw
Watch Lee Bradshaw’s “Images” here