Don Banks

Composer, born in Melbourne, Victoria, SE Australia. He attended the Melbourne Conservatory (1947–9), then studied in London, Salzburg, and Florence. Having settled in England, he became music director of Goldsmith's College (1969–71). He returned to Australia in 1973, became head of Composition and Electronic Music Studies at Canberra School of Music in 1974, and head of the School of Composition Music Studies at the Sydney Conservatory in 1978. His work was particularly influenced by Milton Babbitt and by jazz. His compositions include a horn concerto, a violin concerto, a trilogy for orchestra, An Australian Entertainment (1979), and many film and TV scores.

He initially studied at the University of Melbourne, then moved to London where he studied with Mátyás Seiber. Through Seiber, he gained contacts in the film industry, where he became a frequent composer of music, mainly for cartoons, and the horror movies produced by Hammer Films. Beginning in the mid-1960s, he composed a number of works in the Third Stream style espoused by Gunther Schuller, mixing jazz and concert-music idioms, and began a series of works using electronic music materials.

Banks's best-known works include the Sonata da Camera for flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, and cello (1961), a Horn Concerto (1965), and Violin Concerto (1968).