Dr. David Chisholm
Head of School of Music, University of Auckland
Senior Lecturer
Dr David Chisholm is currently the Head of the School of Music at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. He is internationally recognised as a composer defined by diverse collaborative capacity and a curator and producer of vision and courage. He has won an APRA | AMCOS Art Music award, six Green Room Awards, a French Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Award, a Highly Commended Paul Lowin Prize, a Mention at 36th Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Electronic Art, a Special Mention in the X Media Forum, 31st International Film Festival in Moscow, the Medibank Private State and National Arts Awards and The National Young Achiever of the Year.
David was Composer-in-residence for BalletLab and an Associate Artist for Malthouse Theatre before becoming the Founding Artistic Director of the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music and its roster collective Argonaut. David has undertaken artist residencies at HIAP in Helsinki, EMPAC in New York, Centre Intermondes in La Rochelle, and Camargo Foundation in Cassis. He was the first Australian-born composer to be a featured guest of the Encuentro Internacional de Compositores in Santiago, Chile.
An inaugural recipient of the Victorian Government’s Creator Grants, David holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2019 he was appointed as Senior Lecturer and Composition Convenor to Te Whare o ngā Pūkōrero Pūoro | School of Music at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. He was promoted to Urumatua o te kura | Head of School in early 2021. David is published by Babel Scores, Paris.
Dr David Chisholm delivered our Wagner Lecture - I Love You to Death: Sex and Consequence in Tristan und Isolde on Wednesday 31 July as part of Phil Opera Fest.