Elizabeth Drake
Elizabeth Drake
Dip di Merito (Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena), GradDip New Music Technology (La Trobe)
Elizabeth Drake (’61) is an award-winning composer and pianist. She is involved in composing and performing music for theatre, dance and film as well as live performance and radio. Elizabeth is interested in the theatrical performance of music.
Elizabeth trained as a classical pianist and studied in Melbourne, Siena and London.
She has composed music for over forty film, theatre and dance productions and produced her own music theatre works. She has collaborated extensively with Jenny Kemp and co-directed Call of the Wild as part of the Spoleto Festival in Melbourne. Her scores have appeared at the Adelaide Festival in The Black Sequin Dress and on tour throughout Australia with Still Angela. Elizabeth worked on the Danceworks production, In the Heart of the Eye, which was made into an award-winning film.
Her feature film credits include Road to Nhill and Japanese Story written by Alison Tilson and directed by Sue Brooks. Her most recent film score is for Looking for Grace, a feature film screened in 2015 at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.
Her score for Japanese Story won the Australian Film Industry (AFI) Award for Best Original Music Score for a Feature Film, the Film Critics Circle Award for Best Music Score and the APRA-AGSC Award for Best Feature Film Score. Elizabeth won the Green Room Award for composition for the new Australian theatre work, Cargo, produced by Malthouse Theatre.
She has formed a piano duo, Two Pianos, of which she is the Artistic Director. In 2010 she performed at the Perth International Arts Festival, the Adelaide Railway Station and the Newcastle Conservatorium. More recently she has performed live on ABC Classic-FM from the Iwaki Auditorium, in the Flinders Street Station Ballroom and the Princess Theatre.
When Elizabeth is not spending time in her studio composing or playing the piano, she spends time in her garden or cooking up a storm to entertain guests.
Updated January 2016