Singers’ Lounge

Composer, Workshop Leader & MC (NSW)

Paul Jarman is a composer, lyricist, performer, musical director, and sought-after conductor, presenter, and adjudicator. He has been commissioned over two hundred times by ensembles in Australia and abroad. Many of Paul’s works have become modern choral standards and his music has been published worldwide.

As a cultural ambassador he has worked extensively throughout Australia, Europe, Asia, North America, the Indian and Pacific Ocean in festivals and special events with theatre productions, Aboriginal-Anglo Celtic performance groups, choirs, and orchestras, and as a multi-instrumentalist in Australia’s pioneering ‘world music’ ensemble Sirocco since 1996, representing Australia for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Musica Viva. He has also performed on various Australian movies and composed the music to Mike Dillon’s award-winning adventure documentary films.

In 2010, Paul’s piece for the 40th Anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jnr was performed for President Barack Obama in the White House, and in 2016, Paul was the only composer from the Southern Hemisphere among a group of some of todays most accomplished choral composers, commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a piece for the 400th Anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.

Paul has composed and conducted the music for Australian special events including the Centenary of Federations, the Bicentenary of the Battle of Vinegar Hill, Year of the Outback, The Olympic Arts Festival, The Rugby World Cup Opening Ceremony, United Nations Year of the Mountain, The Queensland 150th and the Australia Day Spectacular. Paul has also composed over one hundred school anthems and is continually active in the development and promotion of choirs and music institutions across Australia and Asia. He has been the artist in residence at many of Australia’s leading schools. Paul is also the patron of the Orange Male Voice Choir.

"By nature, he can’t help but inspire, not only with his compositions which have a way of challenging every singer to be a better person; but also with his contagious passion, his sincere love of people from all walks of life and his limitless energy."
Julie Christiansen OAM – Founder, Voices of Birralee

Photo credit: Alastair Bett