Tony Lewis
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Tony Lewis has been a percussionist, composer and music educator for 47 years. His work has been focused on cultivating a contemporary Australian artistic identity that is built on diverse cultural origins. Highlights of his performance career have been with the trio Waratah (with saxophone player Sandy Evans and Japanese koto player Satsuki Odamura), in collaboration with Dharawal Aboriginal performer Matthew Doyle, with Indian/Western fusion music group Sangam (founded by Hindustani classical sarod player Pandit Ashok Roy), the Renaissance Players and others. He appeared as a soloist at the Commonwealth Arts Festival in Auckland (1990), and directed the Asian segment of the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic games.
Tony has travelled widely to perform, teach, study, compose and conduct cultural exchange projects in West Africa, Southern Africa, Papua New Guinea, Aotearoa New Zealand and other parts of Oceania, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and in Australian Indigenous communities. He has composed a large body of works for the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre (1986-89), and for dance and theatre companies around Australia, and in Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.
Now retired from performance, Tony continues to work as a music educator and recording producer. He has a PhD in ethnomusicology from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and has taught widely in universities around Sydney and New South Wales. He currently lectures in music at the University of New South Wales and runs specialist workshops for the percussion unit at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has published widely, including his book Becoming a Garamut Player in Baluan, Papua New Guinea: Musical Analysis as a Pathway to Learning (Routledge, London, 2018).