Biography

Connor Fogarty (b. 1998) is an award-winning, emerging composer of solo, chamber, choral, symphonic wind, and orchestral music, as well as music for film, theatre, and other multimedia artforms. He is originally from Toowoomba, Queensland and is currently based in Adelaide, South Australia.

From 2016 to 2018, he completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Southern Queensland where he was tutored in composition by Professor Rhoderick McNeill. During this time, he wrote a set of Six Preludes for Solo Piano, a twenty-minute string quartet, several orchestral works, and the score for a feature film.

In 2019, Connor relocated to Adelaide to undertake an honours year in composition at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide under the tutelage of Professor Graeme Koehne and Professor Charles Bodman Rae. During this year, an amended version of his string quartet (retitled Scherzo and Finale) was given its premiere performance by the Australian String Quartet. He also wrote two works for wind orchestra: Sweet Dreams, which was performed twice by the Elder Conservatorium Wind Orchestra, and Landscapes which won the inaugural Adelaide Wind Orchestra Composition Competition.

From 2020 to 2023, Connor completed a PhD in music composition at the Elder Conservatorium with a portfolio-based project titled The Concerto Concept: A Compositional Exploration of Conflict and Cooperation. The project was supervised by Professor Graeme Koehne and Professor Charles Bodman Rae. As part of this project, he wrote four works: Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Orchestra (2020), premiered by the Elder Conservatorium Wind Orchestra, conducted by Luke Dollman with soloist, Bailey Coates; Concerto for Orchestra (2021), premiered by the Elder Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Luke Dollman; Concerto for Oboe and Wind Orchestra (2022), premiered by the Adelaide Wind Orchestra, conducted by Bryan Griffiths with soloist, Celia Craig; and Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and String Orchestra (2022) which has not yet been performed. During this time, he was also involved in the Artology Fanfare project, where his short work, Razzmatazz! (2020) was recorded by the Australian Youth Orchestra and broadcast in various venues across Australia. He was also the winner of the Accompanists’ Guild of South Australia Composition Competition where his work Pygmalion and Galatea for cello and piano (2021) was performed by Umberto Clerici and Daniel de Borah.

In late 2022, Connor was awarded a Helpmann Academy Creative Investment Fellowship, which supported the creation of his 30-minute Symphony No. 1 for wind orchestra. The work was premiered in 2023 by the Adelaide Wind Orchestra, conducted by Bryan Griffiths, and is set to receive a second performance by the same ensemble at the 2024 WASBE conference in Gwangju, South Korea.