Jane Stanley

Jane Stanley (b. 1976) is an Australian-born, Glasgow-based composer. She specialises in composing for live performers. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney and in 2004-5 she was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. Jane was a composition fellow at Tanglewood Music Center in 2008 and a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival in 2009.

Jane’s music has been performed and broadcast throughout the world and featured at festivals including Tanglewood, ISCM World Music Days, Gaudeamus Music Week, Banff, Asian Composers League, Wellesley Composers Conference, and June in Buffalo. Her piece Pentimenti for piano duo represented Australia at ISCM World Music Days (2015) in Wrocław, performed by the Lutoslawski Piano Duo. This piece has subsequently been performed on numerous occasions by Re:Sono Duo, who originally commissioned it.

Jane has received commissions from organisations including Tanglewood, Musica Viva Australia, the Royal Academy of Music and performers such as Robert Irvine, Sarah Watts, Bernadette Harvey, Ensemble Offspring, Halcyon and Glasgow School of Art Choir.

Her music has been recorded for release by artists internationally on labels including Delphian Records, ABC Classics, Tall Poppies, and Karnatic Lab. In July 2024 Jane’s first portrait CD, featuring performances by The Hermes Experiment and Red Note Ensemble, will be released on Delphian Records. Amongst the pieces on this CD is a song cycle which is the fruit of a bourgeoning collaboration with Australian poet Judith Bishop. Jane first set Judith’s poetry to music when she composed 14 Weeks for the Glasgow School of Art Choir

Jane’s most recent music conveys an audible preoccupation with gesture (musical ideas which convey evocative feelings of energetic directed motion), intricately ornamented melodic patterning, and intertwining woven textures. Analogies with other artforms have long been a fertile impetus, such as imagery of weaving, knitting, layering, and collaging. She aims to exploit and maximise the colouristic potential of ensembles for which she composes and to construct nuanced and distinctive energetically-charged material.

Her music bears the influence and impact of numerous composers, some of whom she studied with at the University of Sydney (Peter Sculthorpe, Anne Boyd, Ross Edwards) and later as a visiting fellow at Harvard (Bernard Rands) some whom she learned about in the course of her training (Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Elena Kats-Chernin, Luciano Berio), and others whom she has been fortunate enough to get to know along the way as peers.

Jane is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and as part of this role she engages in practice research as a composer. Current areas of research interest include the idea of embodied composition practice, the role of imagery and imagination within creative process, and hauntology. She has for many years engaged in education outreach with all levels of the curriculum. She is a founding member of the Young Academy of Scotland, a represented composer at the Australian Music Centre, and her music is also published by Composers Edition and the Scottish Music Centre.