ANDREW HOWES
COMPOSER
COMPOSER
Andrew Howes is a Sydney-based composer whose work has been performed by ensembles including the Sydney and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, the Australian and Sydney Youth Orchestras, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Omega Ensemble, the Flinders, Enigma, Kristian Winther and Nexas Quartets, the Bowerbird Collective, Voces8, the Song Company, and Moorambilla Voices, with whom he has been involved over 14 years and 4 studio albums.
2025 saw works premiered at Bundanon & the Utzon Room, the Art Gallery of NSW, Phoenix Central Park, Sydney Town Hall, Broken Hill Civic Centre, the Opera House Steps, King Island, Mutawintji National Park, and on season 12 of ABC’s Back Roads. 2026 has seen collaborations with the ACO Quartet, Hand to Earth, Sydney Youth Orchestra, Santa Sabina College and the King’s Preparatory School, country artist Nancy Bates, and saxophonist Alice Morgan, for whom he composed his Lyrebird Concerto for soprano saxophone and orchestra, which was premiered with the North Sydney Symphony Orchestra in September.
“Howes quickly revealed an imaginative command of orchestral writing... conjured sustained sounds of murky mysteriousness and harmonic density, turning them gradually to reveal an iridescent edge.”
- Peter McCallum, The Sydney Morning Herald (Reviewing Luminifera – Wild Light for Orchestra)
"The second movement, about late night mists, was quite introspective and absolutely stunning... eventually a shiny coat of metallic percussion joined the texture, perhaps invoking stars, or droplets of mist themselves, growing in a huge climax with large sweeping gestures from the saxophone."
- Adriel Sukumar, classikON (Reviewing Lyrebird Concerto)
"Howes opened with pleasingly sweet and, dare I say, pretty music but this was an emotional trap."
- Alan Holley, classikON (Reviewing Moss Stone Cantic)