Martin Wesley-Smith

Wesley-Smith lived in the Kangaroo Valley south of Sydney, where he was a member of the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership which supports projects in East Timor. He died there on 26 September 2019, aged 74.

However, while much of his work was serious, often dealing with tragic issues and events, it also incorporated humour, usually in the form of satire and irony. He said in an interview in 2005:

The Don Banks Music Award was established in 1984 to publicly honour a senior artist of high distinction who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Australia. It was founded by the Australia Council in honour of Don Banks, Australian composer, performer and the first chair of its music board. .mw-parser-output .awards-table td:last-child{text-align:center}

Wesley-Smith led an electronic music and audio-visual performing group, watt, from 1976 to 1998. The group performed internationally, as well as in a regular series of concerts in Sydney. He was also musical director of TREE, a group whose final environmental event was held at Wattamolla Beach in Sydney's Royal National Park in 1983.

Wesley-Smith returned to Australia from the UK in 1974 to teach composition and electronic music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Here he founded and directed its Electronic Music Studio. He established the first computer music studio in China at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1986, and he taught at the University of Hong Kong in 1994-95. He retired from the Conservatorium in 2000.

From the start Wesley-Smith was eclectic in his composition. He created an early Moog #3 piece in 1970 called Vietnam Image. At the same time he composed songs for children's radio and television programs. He was able to "write, sing and record real tunes, as well as esoteric orchestral and chamber music". An interviewer in 2005 describes his eclecticism as follows: "There aren't many composers that I can think of anywhere in the world who have the breadth of activity that you have, writing songs for Playschool and writing pieces for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and writing music theatre pieces and writing straight out agit-prop".

Martin Wesley-Smith AM (10 June 1945 – 26 September 2019) was an Australian composer with an eclectic output ranging from children's songs to environmental events. He worked in a range of musical styles, including choral music, operas, computer music, music theatre, chamber and orchestral music, and audiovisual pieces which bring words, music and images together. He often worked with his librettist brother, Peter Wesley-Smith.