Philip Powers

Philip Powers (born 1963)^[1] is a record producer^[2] who has released 34 CDs on the 1M1 Records label including "The Lighthorsemen" and "The Coolangatta Gold".^[3] He has also produced or been executive producer of a dozen CDs for Sydney Symphony on the Sydney Symphony Live label.^[4] A number of these have been with conductor, Vladimir Ashkenazy and 2 with conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti. The other CD was with Vladimir Ashkenazy as pianist playing rare Rachmaninov works. He was also Supervising Producer of Sir Charles Mackerras, a double CD featuring famous Czech repertoire and Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.

After his graduation from University of New South Wales he was acting in the position of Music Officer for several months in 1984, finally becoming Director of Music for Film Australia in 1986. Between 1983 and 1988 he was responsible for the music appearing in over 200 Film Australia productions, including Cane Toads, "The Movers" and Annie's Coming Out, also working with Gillian Armstrong and Jane Campion on "Bingo, Bridesmaids and Braces" and "After Hours".^[5]

Powers co-produced his first CDs of film scores for the Southern Cross label in 1988, working with Simon Walker on The Wild Duck^[6] and Brian May on "Frog Dreaming".

Other notable releases include contemporary classical music of Elision and a CD with Simon Walker, Guy Gross, Chris Neal and Mark Isaacs on the Music for Pianos, Percussion and Synthesizers CD, which also featured his own work, "Wired"^[7]

Roger Covell, chief classical music critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, wrote in his 1990 review of the CD: Simon Walker's "Binary" has a feeling of severity and power to it; Philip Powers, producer of the disc and it's animating spirit, inevitably calls to mind a degree of filmic spookiness with his use of almost-human wails and sighs from electronic sources in his inventive "Wired". The article finished with praise for the idea, the concept, Covell writing, [t]he disc is a useful message from composers who are in the process of working out their place in Australian music. More messages of a similar kind would be welcome.^[8]

The Australian Recording Industry Association nominated Powers and the 1M1 label for four ARIA awards:^[9] "Bloodmoon", "Wendy Cracked a Walnut", "beDevil" and the highly regarded Christ Church St. Laurence CD 'Victoria'.

Other notable film scores on CD which Powers produced from classic Australian feature films include "Robbery Under Arms", "The Lighthorsemen", "We of the Never Never", "The Flying Doctors", "Road Games", "Patrick", "Caddie", "Eliza Fraser" and "The Coolangatta Gold". In television he produced the CD of Nigel Westlake's score for the 4-part documentary series, "The Celluloid Heroes".

Powers also wrote the scores for several documentaries, shorts and animated films.

"Ironbark Bill" (1985) is a 5-episode TV short and a feature short animated film narrated by John Clarke which played as the short before Crocodile Dundee.^[10] "Town Under Threat" is a documentary (screening on Channel 7's 'The World Around Us') about the threat of an exploding volcano in Rabaul. "Don't be the Last to Know" is a documentary about the pervading threat of drugs to our children in the mid-1980s in Australia, presented by Michael Willesee. "Let 'em Vote" and "Saturday Saturday" were training films for elections in the 1980s. "Combat Zone" was a classified training film for the army in the series, "War Administration".

In addition to these were films about accounting for a multicultural society, "The Investigation", the supernatural drama, "The Traveller's Tale", and a documentary about the famous Gulflander train which ran from Croydon to Normanton.

References