Login

Enter your username and password

Photo: Nicole Lee

Paul Smith is a composer and researcher based in Sydney. He works as an Associate Professor in Music at the University of New England and holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University where his research focused on music's connection with visual art forms. Paul embraces humour, satire and bright sonorities in his works and focuses on opera and music written for the toy piano.

Paul was the co-artistic director for Sydney-based group Blush Opera (2018-2025). His operatic works have been permiered in Singapore, the US, Italy and at festivals across Australia. His largest operatic work was the two act satire Chop Chef developed with writer Julie Koh which examined the tropes of reality television cooking competitions and premiered at Riverside Theatres in Parramatta. Many of Paul's compositions explore music's potential connection with other art forms and as a result his pieces are often accompanied by other works of art, including animation, theatre or poetry. He has collaborated frequently with artist Todd Fuller providing scores for Fuller's animated pieces, one of which was a finalist for the 2019 Sulman prize and exhibited at th Art Gallery of NSW.

Paul's extensive work with th toy piano has seen him collaborate with Italian specialist Antonietta Loffredo on numerous projects. He has attended toy piano residencies and festivals in South Korea, Japan, Italy and Armenia and received the ABC 2022 Composer Comission Fund to write three works for toy piano and recorder. He has also written about the instrument for The Conversation.

Originally from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Paul studied piano and classical voice while completing a Bachelor of Music at Western Sydney University. In 2011, he was a young artist with Pacific Opera and began working with many Sydney ensembles as a singer before completing his doctorate in composition in 2014.

His published research explores music, Japanese visual culture, and the politics of singing and can be found in the volumes Manga-Vision (2016, Monash University Press), Music's Immanent Future (2016, Ashgate Publishing), and Language and Decolonisation (2024, Routledge).

Paul Smith — current to March 2026