bio  (concise)

Padma Newsome is an Australian composer, arranger, and performer based in Mallacoota, Victoria. His musical palette expresses colours of the coastal wilderness where he lives, blended with modernist avant garde, Hindusthani and folk elements from India, chamber music remnants, and the energy founded in the pop/rock world. 

He composes for traditional large and small ensemble, the electro-acoustic medium, improvised chamber ensemble, music for dance and theatre, and rock bands. Padma is a community focussed musician. He currently directs and delivers Mallacoota’s “Ashes to Music” post NYE 2019 Firestorm creative recovery programme. He is an embedded researcher in Arts recovery. (ANU)

BIO (COMPLETE)

Padma Newsome is a composer, performer, and recording artist, born in Alice Springs, Australia in 1961. He resides in the coastal town of Mallacoota where he writes, records, and makes music with community. 

Padma trained as a concert violist in Sydney, touring throughout Australia, China and the Pacific. In the mid 1980’s he left classical performance to spend six years on an ashram in New South Wales training as a traditional Yogi. During this time he also studied Indian classical music on viola under Pundit Ashok Roy, a Hindustani Sarod player, and transcribed and collated a large collection of Kirtans and Bhajans.

Newsome began formal studies in composition in the 1990’s at the University of Adelaide where he completed a BMus and MMus and continued at Yale University on a Fulbright scholarship where he completed an MM and MMA.  His musical palette expresses colours of the modernist avant-garde, folk music from India and chamber music remnants along with energy of the pop/rock world. He composes for traditional large and small ensemble, the electro-acoustic medium, improvised chamber ensemble and music for dance, theatre and film. 

Padma Newsome is the musical director and composer for Clogs, a new and improvising ensemble that has toured throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, and Canada. His repertoire for Clogs infuses contemporary classical music with the traditional rhythms and harmonies of folk music, driving energy of rock and ample room for improvisation. The ensemble was awarded the prestigious CMA/NEA Special Commissioning Award in 2003 in recognition of its achievements in the field of new and improvised chamber music, and has also received several residency grants from Chamber Music America. 

Clogs has released 5 albums and two EPs featuring Newsome’s compositions: Thom's Night Out (2001), Lullaby for Sue (2003), Stick Music (2004), Lantern (2006), Veil Waltz (2009) on the Brassland/USA and Southern Records/Europe labels. Their 5th album, “The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton” was released in 2009. The record features Newsome’s song cycle composed for Clogs with guest vocalists Matt Berninger of the National, Sufjan Stevens, and Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond. The music was composed during his residency in Ischia, Italy, made possible by a Commissioning and Residency award from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University in 2004/5.

In 2012, Clogs in collaboration with the Mallacoota Community Choir, released a 3 song EP, “The Sundown Song”. The EP featured Newsome’s rich and lyrical baritone voice, singing solo and performing all instrumental tracks. Since then, his voice has become a feature of his recordings and concerts, performing with the The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at BAM, the Adelaide Art Orchestra at the Adelaide Festival, 2013, and with the Orchestra of the Next Century at the Ecstatic Music Festival, Merkin Hall, NY, 2013. In 2014, to critical acclaim, he recorded the solo baritone role in Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new song cycle “Unremembered”. This work was featured in his 2017 tour of Holland and the US where he performed with The Heliand Consort, the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Doelen ensemble at the Cross Linx Festival, Holland and the Knights, New York City.

In addition to his work with Clogs, Newsome was an orchestrator/arranger/violinist/ keyboardist with American rock band, The National. With the release of Boxer in 2007, The National became synonymous with a kind of gritty rock, fused with dark orchestrations.  The 2010 release, “High Violet”, featuring Newsome’s (et al) BloodBuzz Ohio, rose to critical acclaim and is their most popular record to date.  In his role as orchestrator/arranger, Padma has also mentored various “Indie” rock artists, such as Shara Nova and Johnny Rogers. Other collaborations include: Daniel Helin (Belgium), Zachary Miskin (France) and The Devastations (Australia).

As a concert violist, he has performed with Sydney new music ensemble, the Seymour Group, Goossens String Quartet, Adelaide's Fresh Air, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, working under numerous conductors such as Sir Christopher Hogwood, Zdenek Macal, Sir Charles Makkerras, and Stuart Challender. He has performed throughout China, Fiji, the U.S., Canada, Europe, South America, Russia, Turkey, and Australia in venues ranging from the Sydney Opera House, Madison Square Garden, Hollywood Bowl, The Famous Spiegeltent (Sydney Festival), Brighton Festival Dome, Royal Festival Hall for the London Jazz Festival, The Royal Albert Hall, Toronto Opera House, MusicNOW Festival in Cincinnati, to New York City’s Merkin Hall, Weill Hall Carnegie Hall, CBGB’s, The Knitting Factory, and Bowery Ballroom, to name a few. He has played at numerous festival’s in Europe and the United States, including Glastonbury, Bonaroo, Pitchfork, SXSW, Austin City Limits, and Sasqwatch.

Newsome’s music has been performed by ensembles such as the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Academy of Melbourne, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, The Heliand Consort, Locrian Chamber Players, The Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, and Clogs, and by soloists including clarinettist Evan Ziporyn (Bang on a Can), guitarist Bryce Dessner, bassoonist Rachael Elliott, violinists Katie Lansdale and Jennifer Choi, jazz cellist Erik Friedlander, and violists Paul McMillan and Georgina Grosvenor.

He is the recipient of six consecutive ASCAPLUS Awards, winner of 2008 Plug Awards, (Best Song, w/ The National), the 2004/05 Fromm Music Foundation Commissioning and Residency Award, and an Artists Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism (formerly CT Commission on the Arts). Other grants include: Australia Council for the Arts, Vermont Arts Council, Fulbright Post-graduate Award, Symphony Australia, Arts SA, VicHealth, Mallacoota Arts Council, Helpmann Academy, CMA Residency Partnership Program (with Clogs) and numerous private commissions. 

In 2015, Padma collaborated with Aunty Fay Stewart Muir and Lisa Kennedy on The Listening, I am the Water, and goyeep, goyeep, for the 2015 The Shearwater Festival. Goyeep, goyeep is in Boon Wurrung language.  

Since 2014, Newsome has been composing and developing a full-length music narrative, “2 Moon Smile”.  The music was completed in 2017 and had its Vermont mini-dramatic premier in April, 2017, featuring Clogs, The Heliand Consort, 4 dancers, Mary Bonhag, soprano, and community audience/singers. 

In 2018, New Amsterdam Records released Newsome’s first solo album, “The Vanity of Trees”. This was a double release with the EP, “le creature nel giardino di Lady Walton”, for 6 Bass Clarinets, co-released with his sister Sue Newsome.  

In August of 2019, the Baroque specialist ensemble, Dual Aura released their new album, “Traveller’s Tales”, which featured selections from the commissioned work, The Danes of Poowong East. Padma is currently developing a full disc version. 

Padma resides in Mallacoota, Australia, where he mentors, teaches, conducts the Mallacoota Choir and is a leading light for regional community music projects. Since moving to Mallacoota in 2004, he has become increasingly involved in community art and music projects. Working around East Gippsland, he has conducted community choirs, written and collaborated with local musicians, dancers, and artists. He has regularly participated with workshops and performances in the Mallacoota festivals, the Making Mallacoota Music project, Bruthen Blues Festivals, Gippsland Choir Festivals, and the Millenium Chorus (as mentor and choir director), and has collaborated in workshop delivery with artists,  recently e.g. with Kutcha Edwards, and also with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra in collaboration with P-12 College. 

In 2016/17 he taught music at Cann River P-12 College, and has run multiple artists in school initiatives with Mallacoota P-12 College, where he currently takes the Mallacoota Community Choir, an all-ages-all-access choir. 

Since the 2019 NYE Mallacoota Firestorm, and the CV19 long on-set crisis and impact, Newsome has been dedicating much of his time towards making music and art in recovery in Mallacoota. He is the musical director of the “Ashes to Music” programme with funding from Newscorp/FRRR, and under the auspices of the CHIRF (Community Health and Infrastructure Resilience Fund). The “Ashes to Music” programme is dedicated towards bringing music back to a town in recovery and manages multiple projects and sharing schemes, including: the school choir programme, BeachFiddle, a violin studio, BeachUke, open access share/making, instrumental music share/making, Kindergarten Music and Dance programmes, and is responsible for instrument replacement in town. 

Padma is an embedded PhD researcher (ANU). He is an auto-ethnographer and researcher in Arts Recovery, and is co-researcher and author of the “Arts Responder Check List.” www.padmanewsome.com/Arts-Responder-Check-List/

Newsome was educated at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Adelaide University, and Yale University. His teachers have included Dr. Martin Bresnick, Dr. Joseph Schwanter, Pundit Ashok Roy, Alexandru Todicescu, Dr. Graeme Koehne, Eleanor Havda, and Dr. Evan Ziporyn.