10 July 2024
Vale Freddie Hill (1948-2024)
Image: Freddie Hill We are saddened to hear about the passing of Freddie Hill.
Freddie was a jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator, warmly celebrated among the Australian music community. Originally born in London, he was granted Australian citizenship in 1992 and from 1994 lived in Sydney's Campbelltown area with his wife Christine.
Freddie's music spanned both jazz and classical styles. His magnum opus is considered to be The Water Babies (1999) (with producer Jo Truman), based on Charles Kingsley's classic fairy tale. Performed at the Seymour Centre (Sydney) in 2016, the score reflects traditional and contemporary practices with an infusion of jazz. Other notable works include the opera The Circumnavigator (1982), Chickamauga (2006), and Owl Creek (2013).
He was also occupied with educational music, particularly with concert and stage band music for primary and junior high school students. His concert band march Tigers' Tales won the inaugural NSW School Band Composers' Challenge at the University of NSW.
Freddie was warmly known to the AMC as a frequent visitor to the library (before our catalogue moved online) and attendee of in-person events. He was often found with a flugel horn or cornet in hand, and was always ready to belt out a killer jazz solo. Active in various jazz, stage, and community bands, Freddie was performing and playing music in the days just before his passing.
We extend our condolences to his family and friends.
As an AMC Represented Artist, Freddie's music lives on
in the AMC catalogue.
Read more: Freddie
Hill's biography.
© Australian Music Centre (2024) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to reproduce this article either online or in print.
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a friend from long ago
by Caroline Wilkins on 19 July, 2024, 4:55am
I was so touched to read about Freddie. We knew each other in Bristol before either of us had moved to Australia and I remember his jazz sessions at well-known pubs there. Whilst I was living in London during the 1970s we visited Oliver Knussen together and I think Freddie introduced me to the then thriving London Musician's collective. He moved to Australia before me. I arrived in 1980 so we caught up with each other in Sydney and I met his mother, who worked at the Sydney Opera House library. Freddie was part of a band that I formed to play the music of Kurt Weil during the 1980s, playing flugelhorn. He also taught me orchestration privately when I began composing music. After I left to study in Germany we sadly lost contact. I still have a wonderful jazz song he wrote for me, written in his own m/s hand: 'Spring is sprung, The grass is riz, I wonder where dem birdies is? The little bird is on de wing...(ain't that absurd!...) The little wing is on de bird'.
Caroline Wilkins