KOUVARAS, Linda

  Linda Kouvaras is a Melbourne composer, musicologist, and pianist, on staff as Professor at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, the University of Melbourne. She has not studied composition formally but co-wrote many songs in the Punk/New Wave band, Voxpop, with co-instigator Richard Ward (see Who's Who of Australian Rock!, Melbourne: Five Mile Press, 2002) during her "seven-year Easter break" from university studies in the early 1980s. She has benefited greatly from very generous feedback over the years, particularly that from Ward, Brenton Broadstock, Stuart Greenbaum, Richard Zatorski and Katy Abbott. Kouvaras has a proclivity toward text-setting, as well as writing for piano and for strings. Extra-musical catalysts incorporate a wide variety of subject matter; Inflight! (commissioned by the Australian Contemporary Chorale, 2004), for example, is a humorous work, underpinned by a sleazy blues-based bass. The far graver Anagnorisis (53 days) (2002) mixes neo-modal and minimalist soundworlds.