Drawing on nature, important causes and the personal as potential compositional frameworks, Robert McIntyre b.1998 (he/him) is an Australian Naarm/Melbourne-based composer and flautist brings awareness to moments, holding space for them to achieve a multi-faceted sense of visibility.
McIntyre has a Bachelor of Music (Honours) in Composition with First Class Honours from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, supervised primarily by Stuart Greenbaum and Katy Abbott, as well as Elliott Gyger, Miriama Young, Caerwen Martin and Melody Eötvös across his studies. He has strong local and growing international presence, having worked with Australian Youth Orchestra, Solstice Trio, Divisi Chamber Singers, Corvus Ensemble (USA), Trio Immersio (EU), Australian Flute Festival, Collide Trio, Syzygy Ensemble, Jasper Ly, Leigh Harrold, Coady Green, Guitar Perspectives, Melbourne International Saxophone Festival, University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Homophonic! and Midsumma Festival, Australian Global Health Alliance, Victorian Youth Symphony Orchestra, Victorian Flute Guild, and more.
Notable programs to date include the 2021 Australian Youth Orchestra National Composition Program, 2021 ICEBERG New Music Institute (Vienna/New York) and 2022 Composing in the Wilderness (USA). Composed in Alaska, ‘the distance between’ was awarded the 2022 David Henkels Composition Award by the Musical Society of Victoria. McIntyre is also the 2023 recipient of the prestigious Dorian Le Gallienne Composition Award.
McIntyre is a 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellow and undertook a sustainability action-project composing a song cycle about the groundbreaking legal case Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560, performed by Bridgette Kelsey and Solstice Trio with commissioned text by regular collaborator Savanna Wegman. He presented its world premiere in a curation of the same name, ‘Our Duty to Care’, in April in Hanson-Dyer Hall to much acclaim. Excitingly, ‘Our Duty to Care’ returns for its second iteration at Tempo Rubato in February 2024.
His work ‘A Sea Spray of Ash’ (2019), based on climate activism, has also received extensive notice and performance, having won the 2022 No Divide KC Art Song Competition (US, Kansas City) and received dual-selection in KAMMERKLANG’s 2021 ‘Hidden Curiosities’ programmes: performed by Amelia Jones & Stefan Cassomenos and Anna Fraser & Jack Symonds respectively. Additionally, composed during ICEBERG, ‘See through me’ placed 2nd in the 2022 International Luna Nova Composition Contest (Belvedere Chamber Music Festival).
McIntyre was commissioned by Divisi Chamber Singers for the inaugural 2020 Composer Queer Initiative, which saw ‘Syrup and Silicone’, with text by Savanna Wegman, recorded on Divisi’s 2022 debut album Spectrum, which is Australia’s first-ever fully-Queer/LGBTQIA+ classical music album. He is also published in Take Note: Interviews with Australian Composers, edited by musicologist Madeline Roycroft, for his co-interview Stuart Greenbaum. McIntyre also works freelance for Katy Abbott as a composer’s assistant and nears completion of his Juris Doctor at the Melbourne Law School, aspiring to undertake a composition masters further on. He is co-artistic director and flautist of a new duo with pianist/composer Sam Williams, focused on the delivery of new and existing Australian flute and piano repertoire. McIntyre is an Associate Artist represented by the Australian Music Centre.
