UNLOCK'D 2020 meet our judges
Minnie Hill is a Melbourne based award winning composer, arranger and saxophonist who primarily writes and arranges works for big band and smaller jazz settings. While Minnie arranges for her own projects and bands, she has also composed and arranged music for the Daryl McKenzie Jazz Orchestra, Paris Cat Big Band, both Jazz Melbourne Studio Youth Big Bands and school ensembles. Minnie has not allowed the small number of female composers and musicians in the Jazz world to lessen her dreams of becoming an innovative and respected composer.
In 2020, Minnie's arrangement of 'Play Crazy for Me' won 1st place in the inaugural Musicians Arranging Guild of Australia Youth Arranging Competition which was open to arrangers Australia wide that were under 30 years of age. While Minnie is younger than her other writing peers, she sees this as the start of a long and established career within the Melbourne music community.
Prof Andy Arthurs is a creative entrepreneur, producer, publisher, songwriter, composer and performer with much international commercial success. He worked with George Martin (Beatles producer) for a few years in the early 1970s. He has had hit records in UK, Europe and Australia gaining a platinum disc in 1997 for production. He was a CEO of three music companies in the UK and a director of Creative Media Warehouse Pty Ltd in Australia, the parent company of the innovative orchestra DeepBlue (founded in 2005 from an ARC Linkage grant. DeepBlue has had a significant impact as a new performance group.
Academically he was Head of Music at QUT Creative Industries from 1997-2009. QUT Music had a reputation for originality and employability. In research he was involved in 3 ARC Linkage grants -1st named CI of two - and has published in both text and in artistic practice. In addition Prof Arthurs had an impact on Music Education having served on and led many boards and advisory committees in Australia and Asia.
By combining his professional music experience with his academic career he has led responses to the challenges in today’s arts and entertainment sector, namely the convergence of: audience and artist, executive and artistic producer, traditional and contemporary musical genres, performance forms across live and digitally mediated contexts.
Andy was appointment awarded Emeritus Professor in 2016 from QUT.
Constantina Caldis Roberts studied music composition at the University of the Witwatersrand and Sound Engineering at the Academy of Sound Engineering in South Africa. Her compositions encompass a variety of styles including orchestral music, film scores and soundscapes, jingles, contemporary songwriting and greek folk tunes.
As a lecturer of music and sound, she aspires to train young composers to understand the various techniques of music composition whilst still fulfilling their dreams as composers of the 21st century. Constantina has judged battle of the bands competitions and assessed multiple compositions through various universities in South Africa, Canada and now Australia.
Dr Matthew Field completed his Bachelor of Music in piano performance under Dr Mikhail Solovei. While studying his PhD through the University of Newcastle he worked as a performer and educator.
Matthew has previously worked at the Melba Conservatorium of Music, has run workshops in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and the USA and has guest lectured in Singapore.
Matthew has worked with the Australian Guild of Music since 2015 and teaches the Musicianship course for all year levels.