Dr Andrew Callaghan is a composer, sound designer, researcher and educator who lectures in Composition for Creative Industries and film music history at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His expertise includes Hollywood scoring practices, documentary aesthetics, and creating original music for theatre, installations, new media and the screen. Andrew's work asks, "where has music for the creative industries come from, and where is it going"? His research includes historical studies of film and theatre music, and a practice that seeks out new possibilities for musicians working in the creative industries.
His current screen-musicology research focuses on the structures, effects and contribution of accompanying music to realism in narrative and documentary media. He is particularly interested in how music and scoring practices contribute to truth-claims; in an era of epistemological crises, he considers this work important. His thesis, Hushed Tones: Inaudible Music in Hollywood Docudramas, won the Conservatorium Director's Award for Exceptional Doctoral Research. It established that serious, industry-celebrated films based on true stories provide unusually difficult problems for well-established composers. His analyses of the practices and compositions of Hollywood docudramas include those of Alexandre Desplat, John Williams, Marco Beltrami, Henry Jackman and Howard Shore. This research offers insights into broader contemporary scoring practices as well as its impact on audiences' worldviews. His most recent research has examined common trends in the beginnings and endings of cues in visual media, offering insights into subliminal music practices.
As a composer, Andrew has scored and produced music for film, TV, documentaries, and drama that has appeared on SBS and ABC TV, and in TV series that were syndicated worldwide. He has scored a film that appeared at Cannes and worked competitively in the advertising industry, producing music that successfully competed with sound houses across the globe. His work for podcasts, albums, theatre, live events and installations have appeared within many major Australian forums, including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Melbourne Museum, the Sydney Opera house and the Arts Centre Victoria. He has won industry awards within Australia and internationally.
His recent composition and sound work has focused on interactivity and installations, exploring ways technologies may help professional musicians connect with audiences in entirely different ways. This age-old musical purpose-community and connection-could have new life through technology. He has collaborated with communities to build soundscapes, and his installations seek new forms of musicking, allowing non-musicians to co-create and play within complex musical environments. He is currently working on a score for a new digital theatre project funded by Creative Australia.
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