Philip Powers (born 1963) is a record producer - and author - specialising in
film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...
s and classical music. His recordings have been nominated for five
ARIA
In music, an aria ( Italian: ; plural: ''arie'' , or ''arias'' in common usage, diminutive form arietta , plural ariette, or in English simply air) is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrumental or orchestral accompa ...
Awards. He has produced 34 CDs for the 1M1 Records label including ''The Lighthorsemen'' and '' The Coolangatta Gold''. He has also produced or executive produced more than 50 CDs for the
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is an Australian symphony orchestra that was initially formed in 1908. Since its opening in 1973, the Sydney Opera House has been its home concert hall. Simone Young is the orchestra's chief conductor and fir ...
on Sydney Symphony Live and other labels. A number of these have been with the conductor
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (russian: Влади́мир Дави́дович Ашкена́зи, ''Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazi''; born 6 July 1937) is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He i ...
as well as two CDs with the conductor
Gianluigi Gelmetti
Gianluigi Gelmetti OMRI, (11 September 1945 – 11 August 2021) was an Italian-Monégasque conductor and composer.
Early life
Gianluigi Gelmetti was born on 11 September 1945 in Rome, Italy. When 16-years old, Sergiu Celibidache let him conduct ...
. Another CD featured Vladimir Ashkenazy as pianist playing rare Rachmaninov works. He was supervising producer of ''Sir Charles Mackerras'', a double CD featuring famous Czech repertoire and
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic music, Romantic and early Modernism (music), modern eras, he has been descr ...
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...
having acted in the position of Music Officer for several months in 1984, he was appointed Director of Music for
Film Australia
Film Australia was a company established by the Government of Australia to produce films about Australia in 1973. Its predecessors were the Cinema and Photographic Branch (1913–38), the Australian National Film Board (1939–1955, under diff ...
in 1986. Between 1983 and 1988 he was responsible for the music appearing in over 200 Film Australia productions, including ''Cane Toads'', also working with
Gillian Armstrong
Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an Australian feature film and documentary director, who specializes in period drama. Her films often feature female perspectives and protagonists. Many of her movies are historical dramas.
...
and Jane Campion on ''Bingo, Bridesmaids and Braces'' and ''After Hours''. He supervised the musical and choreographed sequences in
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment in ...
-winning director
Bruce Petty
Bruce Leslie Petty, born 23 November 1929 at Doncaster, a suburb of Melbourne, is one of Australia's best known political satirists and cartoonists.AFI 1984 Best Film Winner '' Annie's Coming Out'' which was also nominated for Best Original Music Score, losing to Bruce Smeaton and
Garth Porter
Garth Ivan Richard Porter (born 24 September 1948) is a New Zealand-born Australian multi-instrumental musician, songwriter and record producer. He was a member, on keyboards and backing vocals, of the pop group, Sherbet (1970–84), and co- ...
for ''Streethero''. 18 years later he released the Original Soundtrack Recording on his 1M1 Records label.
He produced his first CDs of
film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...
s for the
Southern Cross
Crux () is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross-shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross. It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way's visible band. The name ''Crux'' is Latin for ...
The Wild Duck
''The Wild Duck'' (original Norwegian title: ''Vildanden'') is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is considered the first modern masterpiece in the genre of tragicomedy. ''The Wild Duck'' and ''Rosmersholm'' are "often ...
'' and
Brian May
Brian Harold May (born 19 July 1947) is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and astrophysicist, who achieved worldwide fame as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen. May was a co-founder of Queen with lead singer Freddie Mercury an ...
on ''
Frog Dreaming
''Frog Dreaming'' is a 1986 Australian family adventure film written by Everett De Roche and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. It starred Henry Thomas, Tony Barry, Rachel Friend and Tamsin West.
Plot
An American boy, Cody (Thomas), whose pa ...
We of the Never Never
''We of the Never Never'' is an autobiographical novel by Jeannie Gunn first published in 1908. Although published as a novel, it is an account of the author's experiences in 1902 at Elsey Station near Mataranka, Northern Territory in which she ...
Harlequin
Harlequin (; it, Arlecchino ; lmo, Arlechin, Bergamasque pronunciation ) is the best-known of the '' zanni'' or comic servant characters from the Italian ''commedia dell'arte'', associated with the city of Bergamo. The role is traditionall ...
Thirst
Thirst is the craving for potable fluids, resulting in the basic instinct of animals to drink. It is an essential mechanism involved in fluid balance. It arises from a lack of fluids or an increase in the concentration of certain osmolites, such ...
Caddie
In golf, a caddie (or caddy) is the person who carries a player's bag and clubs, and gives the player advice and moral support.
Description
A good caddie is aware of the challenges and obstacles of the golf course being played, along with th ...
'', ''
beDevil
''Bedevil'', stylised as ''beDevil'', is a 1993 Australian horror film directed by Tracey Moffatt, the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman.
Plot
The film is a trilogy of surreal ghost stories. Inspired by ghost stories sh ...
'', '' Eliza Fraser'' and '' The Coolangatta Gold''. Additionally, he produced the CD of Nigel Westlake's score for the four-part television documentary series, ''The Celluloid Heroes''.
He also wrote and produced the scores for a number of plays, documentaries, shorts and animated films. He has also written classical music for orchestra, synthesizers and piano as well as a trio for violin, cello and percussion.
''Ironbark Bill'' (1985) is a 5-episode TV short and a feature short animated film narrated by John Clarke. It played in cinemas in Australia as the animated short before the films '' Santa Clause'' (1985) and '' Crocodile Dundee'' (1986). "Town Under Threat" is a documentary (which screened on
Channel 7 Channel 7 or TV7 may refer to:
Television networks, channels and stations
;Algeria
*TV7 (Algerian TV channel)
; Argentina
*Channel 7 (Argentina), a government-owned Argentine TV station
* Channel 7 – Bahía Blanca, an Argentine TV station in Bue ...
's ''
The World Around Us
''The World Around Us'' was an Australian documentary television series that aired on the Seven Network between 1979 until 2006. It regularly showed documentaries which featured the likes of Malcolm Douglas and Sir David Attenborough.
P ...
'') about the threat of a potentially devastating exploding volcano in
Rabaul
Rabaul () is a township in the East New Britain province of Papua New Guinea, on the island of New Britain. It lies about 600 kilometres to the east of the island of New Guinea. Rabaul was the provincial capital and most important settlement in ...
. "Don't be the Last to Know" is a documentary about the pervading threat of drugs to children in the mid-1980s in Australia, presented by
Michael Willesee
Michael Robert Willesee, (29 June 1942 – 1 March 2019) was an Australian television journalist, interviewer and presenter.
Willesee was the son of politician senator Don Willesee; Mike first came to prominence in 1967 as a reporter for th ...
. "Let 'em Vote" and "Saturday Saturday" were training films for elections in the 1980s. "Combat Zone" was a classified training film for the army in the series, ''War Administration''.
In addition to these were films about accounting for a multicultural society, "The Investigation", the supernatural drama, "The Traveller's Tale", and a documentary produced by Anthony Buckley about the famous
Gulflander
The ''Gulflander'' is a passenger train operated by Queensland Rail on the isolated Normanton to Croydon line in the Gulf Country of northern Queensland, Australia.
History
Steam locomotives were used until 1929. By that stage railmotor ...
Croydon
Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extens ...
His work with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra began in 2008 as recording manager, the year before Vladimir Ashkenazy began his five-year tenure as chief conductor. Together they recorded eight CDs of music by
Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...
and
Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''., group=n (27 April .S. 15 April1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, p ...
, with all the symphonies and piano concertos; and in the following three years they collaborated with the Japanese label Exton, and produced another 10 CDs of all of
Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism o ...
's symphonies.
In 2014, he accepted a new contract with the orchestra to produce concerts as live webstreams and for video-on-demand.
Other notable releases include
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included se ...
of Elision and a CD with Simon Walker, Guy Gross, Chris Neal and Mark Isaacs on the ''Music for Pianos, Percussion and Synthesizers'' CD, which also featured his own work, "Wired".
In 2016, the recording he produced of " Josh Pyke with the SSO" received an ARIA Award.
In 2017, Powers produced two concerts for Foxtel for the SSO, directed a film of the performance of "In Paradisum" by the Sydney Youth Orchestra of a work by George Palmer, and produced four new recordings.
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'', wrote in his 1990 review of the CD, "Simon Walker's ''Binary'' has a feeling of severity and power to it; Philip Powers, producer of the disc and its animating spirit, inevitably calls to mind a degree of filmic spookiness with his use of almost-human wails and sighs from electronic sources in his inventive ''Wired''." The article finished with praise for the concept album, Covell writing, " e disc is a useful message from composers who are in the process of working out their place in Australian music. More messages of a similar kind would be welcome."
The
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) is a trade association representing the Australian recording industry which was established in the 1970s by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replac ...
nominated Powers and the 1M1 label for five ARIA awards: ''Bloodmoon'', ''Wendy Cracked a Walnut'', ''
beDevil
''Bedevil'', stylised as ''beDevil'', is a 1993 Australian horror film directed by Tracey Moffatt, the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman.
Plot
The film is a trilogy of surreal ghost stories. Inspired by ghost stories sh ...