Stuart Greenbaum’s music presents a crossover between classical and popular styles, particularly jazz and minimalism. His music invokes an atmosphere apart from the routine of modern life.
Born in Melbourne, Greenbaum studied composition under Brenton Broadstock and Barry Conyngham at the University of Melbourne, graduating with a BMus(Hons) and MMus. In 2000 he gained a PhD in composition, the first candidate to graduate with that qualification from the University of Melbourne.
Greenbaum grew up with popular music (rock, blues, and jazz) as well as the works of the Western classical canon, and his interest as a composer lies particularly in exploring the cross-over and points of commonality between these apparently different musical worlds.
He has written over 200 works including 20 sonatas, seven string quartets, five piano trios, five concertos, four symphonies and two operas.
Major choral works include The Foundling, commissioned by Cantori New York in 1997, and From the Beginning, commissioned for the sesquicentenary of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic in 2003. Nelson, a three-act opera with libretto by Ross Baglin, was presented in London in 2005 and premiered in full at the 2007 Castlemaine State Festival. Their second opera, The Parrot Factory, received a five-show season in 2010 staged by Victorian Opera at The Malthouse.
Greenbaum was a Featured Composer at the 2006 Aurora Festival, Resident Composer at the 2009 Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, and Composer-in-Focus at the 2009 Bangalow Music Festival. In 2009 he was Australia's representative for the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange, working in Auckland with NZTrio on a new piano trio, The Year Without a Summer, which toured nationally for Chamber Music New Zealand, in Sydney for the ISCM World New Music Days (2010) and internationally at the City of London Festival (2011). He was Featured Composer with the Flinders Quartet in 2016 and Resident Composer with MYO in 2019. He was a Resident Fellow at the Akiyoshidai International Art Village in Japan in 2019 and a Composer-in-Residence at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden in 2020.
Prizes include the Dorian Le Galliene Composition Award, the Heinz Harant Prize, and the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. 90 Minutes Circling the Earth won Orchestral Work of the Year at the 2008 Classical Music Awards.
