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Lydia Gardiner is a composer and singer from Perth, Australia. Her work as a composer focuses on developing a harmonic language that uses tonality in a novel and distinctive way, combined with careful manipulation of timbre to evoke image to create a communicative link between herself, the performer, and the listener.

Lydia has been commissioned by the West Australian Young Voices, The UWA Con Cantorum, the Giovanni Consort, the St George's Cathedral Consort, the Anglican Schools Commission, Tura New Music, Perth Orchestra Project, The Choral Collective, the Perth Guitar Quartet, the University of Western Australia Choral Society, Fiore Chamber and the Australian Vocal Ensemble. In December 2021 Lydia's work A New Ceremony of Carols was performed to a sold-out audience by the St George's Cathedral Sonus Angelorum choir and was later broadcast on the radio station ABC Classic, and two of her works have been published on albums; the five stages of grief played by Adam Pinto and The Town of Wind played by the Perth Guitar Quartet. She also participated in the 2020 and 2022 West Australian Symphony Orchestra composition projects, both works being performed at the Perth Concert Hall. In 2024 Lydia's work was performed by Residentie Orkest in The Hague, conducted by Jan Willem De Vriend.

As a singer, she has performed with the St George's Cathedral Perth Consort, Voyces, the Vanguard Consort, Gondwana Chorale and the St Nicholas Basilica Amsterdam Consort. In 2023 Lydia was privileged to sing with Icelandic iconoclast Björk at the Perth Festival with Voyces and at the Dark Mofo festival in Hobart with Max Richter as part of Vanguard Consort. In 2024 she took part in the program Meesters and Gezellen, performing seven concerts around the Netherlands with conductor Yuval Weinberg and members of the Norwegian Soloists Choir.

Lydia holds a bachelor's degree with first class honours in Music Composition from the University of Western Australia. During her second year at the University of Western Australia, she was awarded the Dorothy Ellen Ransom prize for composition, as well as the people's choice award at the same event. Lydia is currently based in The Hague, where she commenced a Master of composition at the Royal Conservatoire in 2023, studying with Calliope Tsoupaki and Mayke Nas, and is the recipient of the Holland and Excellence Scholarships from the Conservatoire.

"To Gardiner's A New Ceremony of Carols, Sonus Angelorum brought the same stylistic versatility and beauty of sound to the new work as they had to its elder. In composing for the choir, Gardiner-who also doubled (tripled!) as choral singer and soloist in the work-more than equalled the work of her predecessor, building on and expanding the harmonic language and stylistic diversity set before her."
- Limelight Magazine on A New Ceremony of Carols

"This highly talented young composer (b. 1999) uses this work to push the boundaries of the guitar's string harmonics… in this she pushes the textures of the guitar into under-explored areas on its outer edge."
- X-press Magazine on The Town of Wind

Biography provided by the composer