Marguerite Boland

Marguerite Boland is a composer and writer. Her compositions take their impetus from encounters with people and places. She writes music in response to the moment, and to the extraordinary skill and creative ability of performers she comes into contact with. Most of all she enjoys the collaborative process. Her musical style draws on influences from 20th century modernism, soundscapes and early music.

Recent compositions include In De Wind (choir and saxophone quartet) for the collaboration of Niels Bijl’s Axes Quartet with the Astra Choir; Ave Maria! (10-part a capella choir) for Astra Choir’s International Women’s Day concert at the Good Shepherd Chapel; recorder pieces for Convent recorder maker Joanne Sauder’s performance in the Magdalen Laundries; Ètudes Mallalieu (solo clarinet) performed by the MSO’s clarinettist Craig Hill. Pianists Michael Kieran Harvey and Edward Neeman have performed her Two Miniatures for solo piano in Australia and New York; and Harvey included these pieces on his Move Records CD Astra 60. Electroacoustic compositions include Soundscape with Magpies (treated field recordings) for an NGV Design Week exhibition at St. Heliers Street Gallery; and Childplay included on the Australasian Computer Music Society’s 60×60 Melbourne CD.

Marguerite also writes mostly academic articles about music. With John Link, she edited the book Elliott Carter Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and her chapter on Johanna Beyer’s (1888-1944) String Quartet No.2 is forthcoming in a book with Oxford University Press. With John Link and Guy Capuzzo, she co-edits the refereed journal Elliott Carter Studies Online.