Linda Kouvaras

Pianist and Composer

MMus PhD AMusA

Linda Kouvaras is a Melbourne-based composer, pianist, and musicologist, specialising in contemporary Australian "art"-music and in popular music. She studied piano in UK in 1984, returning to Melbourne University to complete her undergraduate (1988) and Masters (1991) degrees in piano, and a PhD in Musicology (1996). During her University studies she was awarded numerous scholarships and prizes for piano performance and academic merit.

Linda has performed at many Australian metropolitan and regional venues. A recital highlight was at the Australian Embassy in Moscow in December 1999, where she was invited to perform her own piano music. Her recordings appear on Move Records and with the ABC, and include her 'Distant Lullaby', recorded by Linda Thompson (soprano) and Deviani Segal (piano), on their CD Repose (Move Records MCD 142 (1999)), and most recently, a recording of 'Secrets of the Amphitheatre' (from the Bundanon Suite for Piano), recorded by Ian Holtham on his CD, Giants in the Land (Move Records MD 3239 (2002)). Her recitals and recordings are broadcast on ABC-FM and 3MBS radio. Since 1996 she has been an Adjudicator for National and State Sounds Australian Awards, in composition and performance, and served on the 1999-2001 National Score-Reading Panel for Symphony Australia.

After time spent writing in rock bands in the late 1970s, Linda returned to composition in the mid-1990s, writing Two St Kilda Sketches for the Composing Women's Festival of 1994 (Melbourne). In 1999, Linda was invited to perform at a memorial concert tribute to Australian artist, Arthur Boyd, at the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Estate, Bundanon, NSW. At this concert she premiered her Bundanon Suite for Piano, written during her time there as Artist-in-Residence earlier that year; she was granted further residencies in January-February 2000 and February 2001. The CD of her piano music, Kouvaras: PianoWorks, was "CD of the week" on ABC Classic FM in November-December 2000. Recent Festival performances of her works include the Canberra National Composing Women's Festival (September 2001), the Perth New Music Week (August 2001), and the Port Fairy Festival (September 2002).

She lectures at Melbourne University's Faculty of Music and has been Senior Resident Tutor in Music and Creative Arts at Ormond College since 1993.

Linda's CD PianoWorks is available.
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PianoWorks

The Piano Music of Linda Kouvaras "... remarkable" (Margaret Throsby, ABC Classic FM)

These works for piano by Linda Kouvaras were written in response to specific locations - as a reflection on the lived experience of three distinctly different sites: a residential college at Melbourne University, the inner Melbourne bayside suburb of St. Kilda, and a working farm and historic homestead situated on the Shoalhaven River in NSW.

Linda's 'Distant Lullaby' is featured on the CD Repose, which consists of lullabies by Australian composers performed by Linda Thompson, soprano, and Deviani Segal, piano.
Please contact us for more information.