Edward Primrose is a composition graduate from the Canberra School of Music studying with Larry Sitsky, Donald Hollier, and Don Banks. He won the ASME Young Composers Award in 1980 for “French Suite” and has been commissioned by, among others, the Melbourne and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, and the Seymour Group. He studied conducting with John Curro and Ezra Rachlin and made his conducting debut in 1979 with La Belle Helene.
He spent several years in the UK and France as composer for theatre, dance, video, and film. Since returning to Australia he has become a regular orchestral recording conductor specialising in recording to image. In 1996-7 he conducted a series of recordings with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In 1998, he was the Artistic Director of Camera Camerata – an orchestral recording project for filmmakers and the Australian Youth Camerata Orchestra. In 2000, he conducted recordings of works for the Opening Ceremony, Sydney Olympic Games with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In December 2012, Edward conducted the inaugural “SpaceTime Concerto Competition”.
Edward Primrose was the founding Artistic Director of Camera Camerata (orchestral music for film recording project) in 1998 with the Australian Youth Orchestra and incorporating five teams of filmmakers and composers. He has taught composition at the University of Western Sydney, Nirimba Contemporary Music Centre, the Australian Institute of Music (as head of Composition & Music Theory 1993-4), the American University in Paris, the University of Sydney, the Centre for Continuing Education, Sydney Film School, Macquarie University, the International Film School of Sydney, Newcastle Conservatorium, Box Hill Institute and the Academy of Film, Theatre & Television. He was Composer in Residence at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) 1995-97. He was then the first to be appointed Lecturer in Screen Composition at AFTRS 1999-2000 and again in 2007-13. He has also lectured at the Queensland Conservatorium and the Film School at Griffith University.
Dance; and Film: Révérence, Humanimation, the dancer from the dance (all nominated for the AGSC/APRA/AMCOS Best music for documentary in 2000, 2002 and 2014).
Recent works include Entre les lines (String orchestra), Lignes de faille (Contrabass sax & 6 trombones), the electroacoustic work One Hour Above Earth, music for the documentary the dancer from the dance. He wrote, directed and composed the film Kill Only This One; plus incidental music for the radio dramas Ghost Words and Brother Boy for ABC Radio National; and music for the Christopher Hampton play Les Liaisons Dangereuses. In 2014, his radio play Ray and Ponce was broadcast on Soundproof, ABC RN.