Kit Grahame

Kit Grahame was born in 1985 in Wollongong, Australia. His mother, a piano teacher, introduced him to music at an early age, and he has always had an interest in composition. He was examined in Solo Piano through the Trinity College London and completed his Higher School Certificate in Music in 2002, with an emphasis on Composition. He also played clarinet in community bands and orchestras, and has sung with various community and semi-professional vocal ensembles during high school and university, and through to adulthood.

Over the last decade, he has sung with the Australian Contemporary Chorale, a Melbourne-based choir dedicated to exclusively performing new Australian music, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus, LOW REZ Melbourne Male Choir (for whom he also arranges popular music for TTBB), London Gay Men's Chorus, and London Oriana Choir. He currently sings with The Fourth Choir, an LGBT+ chamber choir in London.

One of Grahame's newest pieces, Lullaby, based on a poem by W.H. Auden, was premiered in London in August 2018 by Lumen Chamber Choir, and was released on CD and online by Convivium Records. This is thanks to an incredible project by Lumen to support and promote new and emerging composers across the world.

Some of Grahame's compositions have been performed by choirs in Australia, including the Australian Contemporary Chorale, with the world premiere of Ave verum corpus, and the Australian première of Stabat Mater in October 2007.

Thanks to the SibeliusMusic/ Score Exchange website, he received an offer from the Chamber Singers, Inc. of Northeast Ohio, to première Stabat Mater in the USA in October 2005, and Weihnachtslied for their Christmas concert in 2008. There are now several MP3 excerpts from their performance available on this website.

Some of Grahame's other compositions include: Magnificat, which has already been received with interest by local musicians; and his most challenging work yet, a setting of the Ancient Greek text of the Nicene Creed, Pisteuo eis hena Theon (Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεόν), in which he has explored new and interesting harmonic and rhythmic ideas. His current projects involve experimenting with setting other languages, including psalms in Hebrew (Adonai ro'i, lo ekhsar) and Anglo-Saxon (Hu lange wilt þu?).

A quote from Dr J.D. Goddard, Founder and former Artistic Director of Master Singers, Inc. of Northeast Ohio and Chamber Singers, Inc., on Stabat Mater:

• "This is quite a dynamic piece for having been written by a 19 yr. old Australian young man… It is modern yet classical in sound and structure, i.e. chaos to resolution, cluster chords, modal, yet sensible in usage. It definitely carries a great weight with regard to the dramatic involvement of the singers and the stylistic interpretation it so richly deserves. The dynamics alone are impressive: ppp-fff. This Stabat Mater will be full of tension-filled dramatic moments followed by equally as many relaxed and gentle moments of pathos and serenity. This is an absolutely wonderful composition. It possesses all of the great ingredients of an a cappella composition: drama, tonality versus atonality, extreme dynamics, serious subject matter, superb moments of musical nuance, challenging rhythms, tricky metric notation and flowing melodic lines of romanticism. This piece has it all, and yet it is only 20-25 minutes in length."

If you are interested in performing one of my compositions, and would like to let me know, please contact me. I would love to hear about the interesting places around the world my music goes!