Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:24:35 +0930
From: Christian Haines <christian.haines@adelaide.edu.au>
Subject: [Acma-l] Tristram Cary
Dear All
It is with great regret that I inform you of Tristram Cary’s passing
after a long illness.
A truly sad day.
Tristram was born in Oxford on 14th May 1925. He served in the
Royal Navy from 1943-6, specialising in radar and thereby receiving
training in electronics. During his war service he independently
developed the idea of what was to become tape music, and began
experimenting as soon as he was released from the Navy in late 1946.
From 1954 he found himself able to live by score commissions, and
from that time produced a large variety of concert works and scores
for theatre, radio, film, TV, public exhibitions etc.
He was founder (in 1967) of the electronic music studio at the Royal College of Music, and designed and built his own electronic music facility, one of the longest established private studios in the world. The equipment from this studio was brought to Australia, and
most of it was incorporated into the expanding teaching studio at the University of Adelaide. He was also a founder Director of EMS
(London) Ltd, and co-designer of the VCS3 (Putney) Synthesiser and other EMS products. He called upon a wide range of resources for
generating film, TV, theatre, radio or concert music, special dialogue treatments, or anything in the area of specialised sound.
His wide experience as a composer included all aspects of instrumental and vocal ensemble, any facet of electronic music, or
combinations of several types.
Tristram played a pivotal role within the Elder Conservatorium until
1986, when he left the University to resume self-employment. During
1988-90, he was largely occupied with writing a major book on music
technology which was published in London as The Illustrated
Compendium of Musical Technology in May 1992 (Faber & Faber). The
American version – substituting Dictionary for Compendium – is
distributed by Greenwood Press, Connecticut.
In 1995 and 96 there were performances in London and Adelaide to
mark his 70th birthday, and a new suite based on his music for the
Ealing film The Ladykillers won The Gramophone Award for best film
music CD in 1998.
Apart from composition activity, Tristram was a respected music critic for The Australian newspaper. In recent years he held the position of Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, in which capacity he continued his computer music research. In 2001 the University also conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Music. In 1991 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to Australian music. In 1999 he
received the SA Great Music Award for the year, and Symphony Australia commissioned a new work – Scenes from a Life – to mark his 75th birthday in 2000. He received the Adelaide Critics Circle 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award on December 5, 2005.
(Provided by The Director of the Elder Conservatorium, David Lockett)
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End of Acma-l Digest, Vol 65, Issue 19
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