Mark Isaacs Music

My website was rebuilt, in case you'd like to scout around.

Mark Isaacs – Mark Isaacs Mark Isaacs is an internationally-acclaimed composer, pianist and conductor in classical music and jazz, as well as being a film composer and songwriter.

No doubt most of you won't have time for this, but a few months ago I recorded a lengthy "life story so far" interview with Vincent Plush for the State Library of NSW's Oral History project, which "preserves for future generations a sound portrait of who we are". There's about 2 hours of our talk at the link below, and if you do venture in and want to hear it all, note that it is in 3 parts, with a separate tab to click on for each.

Item 1: Mark Isaacs interview by Vincent Plush Item 1: Mark Isaacs interview by Vincent Plush

Spotify just told me my music had a good year on their platform.

Huge and sincere thanks to everybody who helped with this: campaign now completed. It is so appreciated. Of course, even though we didn't quite make the target at ACF, I will still compose the sonata for Loretta, and with bells on!

Delighted that ABC Classic radio just played my fantasia "Solace" on a motif by Scott Joplin, commissioned for Guitar Trek, written under lockdown, and released on Friday by the ABC label. Hear it at the Spotify link below.

Solace - After a motif by Scott Joplin Mark Isaacs, Guitar Trek · Song · 2023

Congratulations Guitar Trek on this ABC Classic release out today, and I am delighted to have been commissioned to compose a piece for the album which I wrote during lockdown with the assistance of Create NSW: it's my reframing of a motif from Scott Joplin's "Solace". My piece streams on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOdbFPUP_UU if you'd like to listen to it.

Guitar Trek - On Song - ABC Classic Australia’s acclaimed guitar quartet Guitar Trek turns to the world of popular music, inviting seven composers – three Australians and one each from Brazil, Russia, the UK and the USA – to create new classical guitar pieces inspired by pop songs. From Joni Mitchell to Lady Gaga, Scott Joplin t...

In the few days remaining, Loretta Palmeiro and I would very much welcome your tax deductible donations of any amount you can manage to help us near our fundraising target for me to compose a soprano saxophone sonata, which she and I, and doubtless others in the future, will look forward very much to performing and recording.

Artist Project: Mark Isaacs soprano saxophone sonata Mark Isaacs will compose a 20-minute multi-movement, through-composed, but jazz-orientated, sonata for soprano saxophone and piano, initially for the established duo Loretta Palmeiro & Mark Isaacs.

My solo gig in Brisbane Thursday night is video streaming live on YouTube at this link below and will also be available on demand at the same link thereafter. 8pm QLD AEST time i.e. 9pm in NSW/VIC, 6pm WA & etc. YouTube will show local time start at the link.

Mark Isaacs: Solo Piano "New Standards" - 12/10/23 Mark Isaacs’ solo piano program is a reimagining of much-loved classic melodies. All are new-to-jazz choices from the 1960s & 70s including by songwriters su...

Mark Isaacs is bringing his solo piano program to JMI Live this THURSDAY! 🎹

A reimagining of much-loved classic melodies, all are new-to-jazz choices from the 1970s & 70s including tunes by songwriters such as Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell and the late Burt Bacharach.

Doors 7:30PM, Music from 8PM.

🎫 : https://events.humanitix.com/mark-isaacs-solo-piano-standards

Thank you for producing and releasing this, ABC Classic.

Mark Isaacs – Sonata - ABC Classic Award-winning Australian pianist and composer Mark Isaacs has an international reputation for cutting-edge musical beauty. Sonata, his new album for solo piano, shows off his contemporary Romantic vein: elegant, dramatic, passionate and utterly captivating.

In 1987 I composed and conducted the orchestral music for this. YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

The Adventures of Robin Hood 1985 Classic animation by Burbank Films from 1985

In 1988 I composed and conducted the orchestral music for this. YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

The Black Arrow (1988) Classical animation by Burbank Films from 1988

In 1988 I wrote the words & music for and produced the theme song (sung by Kerrie Biddell) for this, and improvised the incidental music as the film ran in the studio on a bank of 80s synthesisers in one of my more bizarre efforts! YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

Alice in Wonderland 1988 Classic animation by Burbank Films from 1988

In 1986 I composed and conducted the orchestral music for this. YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

Ivanhoe (1986) Classic animation by Burbank Films from 1986 (If the video looks ugly it's because youtube overcompress the video and there is nothing I can do about it)

In 1987 I composed and conducted the orchestral music for this. YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

Rob Roy (1987) Classic animation by Burbank Films from 1987 (if the video looks ugly it's because youtube overcompress the video and I cant do anything about it)

In 1988 I composed and conducted the orchestral music for this. YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

Wind in the Willows (1988) Classic animation by Burbank Films from 1988(If the video looks ugly it's because youtube overcompress the video and tehre is nothing I can do about it)

In 1987 I composed and conducted the orchestral music for this. YouTube now has many of these films I did available in high quality.

Black Beauty 1987 Classic animation by Burbank Films from 1987

This has been out 3 months now from ABC Classic: went fast. You can listen on your favourite music platform through this multilink https://snd.click/IsaacsSonata?pid=pQ5EkZgeuTeq or buy a CD (16-page booklet) at https://markisaacs.com/recordings/

Mark Isaacs – Sonata - ABC Classic Award-winning Australian pianist and composer Mark Isaacs has an international reputation for cutting-edge musical beauty. Sonata, his new album for solo piano, shows off his contemporary Romantic vein: elegant, dramatic, passionate and utterly captivating.

It was a pleasure to be a guest on The Music Show seated at the piano talking to the the warmly formidable Andrew Ford about my recent SONATA album release on ABC Classic, finishing up with a live performance sample of my upcoming "New Standards" concert in Brisbane: my reframing of Joni Mitchell's gorgeous classic 'Both Sides Now'. If you're pushed for time, my bit starts at 23:00 in the one-hour program.

Dutch - Indian Jugalbandi and Mark Isaacs Passion for Harmony - ABC listen Saskia Rao-de Haas took her Dutch cello to India, learnt the complex raga system and stayed. She’s modified the instrument whose ‘voice’ sits curiously well in the world of Indian classical music. With her musical partner and husband Shubhendra Rao they’re in Australia performing ‘jugalban...

A duet I recorded for the ABC in 1978 when I was 19, accompanying the monumentally gifted Australian diva the late Kerrie Biddell. The singing is nothing short of extraordinary, the piano playing in turn rather ordinary of course. It was a privilege nonetheless to be her pianist at such a tender age. "Stay" with it right to the end, because after my nondescript instrumental break she reprises the bridge coquettishly, but later sears with the word “Stay” which she literally sobs out (she called that sort of thing "blood on the microphone") and then this incredible long note on an ensuing rendering of “stay” which is given such amazing colour shadings as she diminuendos, and with the breath control to then splice it miraculously onto the first part of the next phrase.

Kerrie Biddell "My Funny Valentine" duet with Mark Isaacs (ABC 1978) Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “a splendid musical mind”, Mark Isaacs has achieved widespread international recognition as a composer and pianist working in both classical music and jazz.

Ariana Ricci is an undergraduate student at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and she gave a simply stunning performance with their New Music Ensemble of the 'Berceuse' (cradle song) movement from my Chamber Symphony. Please listen to her here (7 minutes). I can't really put into words (though I have tried!) what it feels like as a composer to receive this kind of interpretation of one's work.

Berceuse from Chamber Symphony (2014) - Mark Isaacs (b.1958) The Chamber Symphony, by Australian composer Mark Isaacs, is a study in concision. It is shorter in length than a traditional symphony – being only 16 minute...

Review now published online:

"Exquisite, thoroughly majestic in feel...It is a testament to Isaacs's melodic sensibilities that he can be linked to Jarrett and Corea. Like them, he creates music, irrespective of how we might choose to classify it." RHYTHMS MAGAZINE

Mark Isaacs - Sonata (ABC Classic) - Rhythms Music Magazine Mark Isaacs – Sonata (ABC Classic, CD & digital) Mark Isaacs is one of Australia’s finest pianists, whose career habitually criss-crosses jazz and classical. Possessed of a pitch-perfect ear, he was dabbling with jazz improvisation [...]

An interview I recently did with Matt McMahon and Dan Barnett for Eastside Radio.

Blow: In Conversation With Mark Isaacs - 89.7 Eastside FM Mark Isaacs offers insight, opinions and behind the scene processes in conversation with Matt McHahon and Dan Barnett regarding his music.

A review of SONATA from Des Cowley in September 'Rhythms' magazine.

"Exquisite, thoroughly majestic in feel...It is a testament to Isaacs's melodic sensibilities that he can be linked to Jarrett and Corea. Like them, he creates music, irrespective of how we might choose to classify it."

Playing with Loretta Palmeiro & Mark Isaacs at St Stephen's Church. A shout out to my lovely hairdresser Georgette at Hair By Gigi whose handiwork you can just make out in the darkness.

If you have time, today Thursday at around 3pm AEST I will be doing a long interview on Eastside Radio with Matt McMahon and Dan Barnett. Listen live online at the link below

Eastside Radio 89.7FM Eastside Radio - Side By Side

For our high school journal in leaving year, there was published a mugshot of each of us, with an epithet from literature offered to sum us up. Mine was from T.S. Eliot. I suppose some would still hold me as mad?

Today I attended an Alumni Day at my old school Sydney Technical High School, an academically selective State school (class of 1975). As well as once again playing the school song for assembly as I had done every week back in the day, I gave the following speech to the boys:

It’s not very many months shy of half a century since I found myself here in Year 12.

I’ve written publicly in praise of my time at Tech, about how two outstanding teachers actually set me on my life path: Christopher Leechman for music, and Jim Black for English.

They were far from run-of-the-mill educators, in this far from run-of-the-mill school, and their lessons were beyond the normal curricula.

Their first lesson: to pursue a calling, not a vocation or profession.

It’s easy to see how a “calling” relates to the practice of the humanities – say in my area of music – but it’s a path for everywhere: in science, medicine, law, education, technology, religion, social work, or a trade for that matter.

A “calling” is something that sparks the deepest joy in you, found where your most individual talents and interests lie, so that, in following the “calling”, you might add value and example to the lives of others, which only multiplies the joy. Those are its governing virtues: to make that which feeds your soul your life’s work, not a hobby.

Those that pursue a calling might never even have to “go to work”. One thing I’ve noticed people so often say while at their “work” is that they’d rather be doing something else. They can’t wait for 5pm, or for their annual leave, in order to do what they’d rather be doing.

Not me. I’ve worked for decades, seven days a week, without feeling that. My “work” has always been the thing I’d most like to be doing. There are many areas in music I knew would feel negatively like “work” immediately, so I didn’t even begin those. If I started on some niche of music and that feeling of “work” developed, it was time to quickly drop it.

It’s not for everyone of course, but I’ve never drawn a salary in my life. I was in the gig economy from the beginning, doing the one-night stand music “gigs” which gave us today’s term. Later, a “gig” for me could be a commission to write a symphony, concerto or sonata, or to make an album, or go on tour with my band, each taking a number of months with commensurate rewards.

The second lesson I received from my teachers here were vigorous warnings to steadfastly resist the forces conspiring against a “calling”, which were identified for me as “materialism”, “consumerism” and “conformity”. Each person, each family, will need to work out what this means specifically at the practical level, but at its root it does not say that money is unimportant, just that if one wishes to nurture a calling, money’s importance cannot be placed above all else. In a clash between a calling and money, the calling must win if at all practicable. Where money and calling sit comfortably together, as they so often can, then well and good.

Cast your suspicions also toward so-called “job security”. It is a lie, does not exist ultimately, but even where it can be had for a time, would you really want it above all else?

Resisting unswerving conformity to materialist or consumerist forces may mean (hopefully without rancour) ignoring even well-meaning advice from parents, and yes, teachers or other advisers. You have every right; it’s your life; nobody else’s. I was still at school when I started resisting the seduction of such forces and I have not stopped, as they have not, if anything becoming all the stronger. One’s personal integrity will be assaulted through media messaging too, including, or maybe especially, social media.

The third lesson I learned was not taught here, perhaps because it was too personal. I learned it for myself later and I hope you will permit me to share it.

If you choose a calling, and you also mean to join with a life partner, choose someone who shares your values wholeheartedly. And if you choose to be a father, don’t imagine that you must thereby give up all your dreams, or your partner theirs. I would suspend my dreams if necessary so our daughter could eat, and have shelter, but it rarely comes down to those existential things in a country like Australia. My partner and I certainly chose not to give up our dreams merely so our child could enjoy ephemeral bourgeois luxuries that her friends may have happened to have.

For my HSC in 1975, here at Tech, my Shakespeare play was Hamlet. Let’s remember what Shakespeare said through his character Polonius’ mouth:

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Thank you dear school, dear Tech, for welcoming me today, and for all you gave me in the six years I proudly wore your uniform.

My latest creation, an allegorical cartoon, now comes to life as a 42-second animated video.

Waves Waves by Mark Isaacs(An allegory)

We are grateful to now be at 40% of target in our campaign to raise funds for me to compose a soprano saxophone sonata for Loretta Palmeiro. If you feel able to contribute, donations of any size are welcome at the Australian Cultural Fund platform linked in the preview below, and please note that donations are tax deductible.

Artist Project: Mark Isaacs soprano saxophone sonata Mark Isaacs will compose a 20-minute multi-movement, through-composed, but jazz-orientated, sonata for soprano saxophone and piano, initially for the established duo Loretta Palmeiro & Mark Isaacs.

Photo just surfaced of my very first time in a recording studio, age 14-15, a school band at the ABC (why, and what, I don't remember)

Thanks to reuniting with an old school friend yesterday, you can see me playing in the school jazz band, age 14 or so. Formidable music teacher Chris Leechman at the piano. I'd forgotten I'd played a bit of saxophone, just like I forgot, but was reminded from an earlier photo shared here, that I played tuba too, in the school brass band.

Many years ago I created this cartoon in my mind as an allegory for a profound idea which resonates deeply with me. And now some generous and talented people have helped me bring it to life, and so I'd love to share it with you.

The performance is long gone, but I thought I'd share this gorgeous pic. If you'd like to help this extraordinary woman have a brand new soprano saxophone sonata written for her (by little old me as it happens) a tax-deductible donation of any size is very welcome at tinyurl.com/saxsonata

Hopefully you can join us at our upcoming performance this Wednesday 6pm at St Stephens Uniting Church, Macquarie St Sydney