About

Rae Howell is an award winning composer, multi-instrumentalist, and piano artisan. She is founding director of Sunwrae, a touring ensemble, label and sheet music publisher; and Opportune Pianos, her ventures as a piano tuner and technician. She has worked professionally in many places over the globe, including Melbourne, London, and New York, and has produced a large catalogue of original music albums, publications, collaborative recordings and sound designs.

Rae's work as an artist is inspired by, and directly derived from environmental concerns, beginning with the buzz of a bee, the call of a bird, or the hammer of a piano. She works across a broad range of genres in collaboration with performing and visual artists, in film, theatre, dance, concert hall, and multimedia productions.

She has studied music at Melbourne University, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, New York University Steinhardt, with her list of works spanning solo to orchestral pieces, sound designs for installations, film and theatre soundtracks, and special event commissions.

Rae has been awarded a UNESCO Aschberg Bursary, a Finzi Trust Scholarship and Guildhall Trust Scholarship (UK), the Eric Stokes Award (USA), the inaugural MOMENTUM Commission through the Australian Music Centre, and The BigCi Environmental Award. She is a fellow of Yaddo and the Millay Artist Colony in New York, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska, the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, The Banff Centre Canada, and has been Visiting Composer for numerous projects and residencies including the ARENA International Theatre Festival in Erlangen, Germany; Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil; The Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden; Ho Chi Minh City Opera House Vietnam, ECCO International in The Gambia West Africa; La Sonora in Argentina; The Edward Said National Conservatoire of Music in Palestine; and Backspace Arts in Australia.

Her music has been broadcast on WNYC, NPR, BBC Radio 3, ABC Classic FM, ABC Radio National, plus a myriad of regional and community radio stations globally. Performing ‘little symphonies for the contemporary population’, Rae’s compositions are a rare treat, crossing the boundaries of classical, jazz, popular and cinematic styles with immediacy and vibrancy rarely experienced in contemporary music today.

Rae has performed her music at festivals and concerts worldwide including Australia House London for the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip and Sir David Attenborough; the Ho Chi Minh City Opera House Vietnam; Mezaparks Grand Bandstand, Brothers Kokaru Hall, in Riga, Latvia; i=u Festival London; SxSW Festival USA; Golden Plains Festival; Brisbane Festival; The Famous Spiegeltent; Camden Haven Music Festival; and the Museum of Modern Art in Salvador, Brazil. Other career highlights include projects for One Off Makery (AUS), Shakespeare's Globe Theatre London, and Puppets with Guts (UK), 'Rabbitsss' with media artist Jon Cohrs (USA), and collaborations with NY composer and instrument-maker Bradford Reed.

A finalist in the 2020 APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards for Excellence in a Regional Area, Rae's large-scale environmental research project 'Bee-Sharp Honeybee' premiered at the Natimuk Frinj Biennale, featuring a string orchestra, a live honeybee hive and realtime animated visuals projected onto giant wheat silos in rural Australia. Supported by the APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund, Creative Victoria, The Pollination Project and a cohort of private funders, the creative process of Bee-Sharp Honeybee was the feature of an awarding-winning short documentary film by Deacon Warner (USA), and toured international environmental film festivals during 2018-2019. Prior to winning a Silver Medal at the 2023 Global Music Awards, Rae conducted an exclusive performance of the work at Mezaparks Grand Bandstand, Riga, Latvia, with the Sponte String Ensemble (May 2023).

Rae’s album releases include Never Stops to Wait (2005), several Live Eavesdropping CDs & DVDs (2003-2007), Autumn Never Fall (2009), Live at The Thornbury Theatre (2010), Heavy Forest Air (2013), Penguins (by Rabbitsss, 2014), Invisible Wilderness Vol I & II (2015), Captain Matchbox (2016), and Bee-Sharp Honeybee (2023, Navona Records USA). These accompany ensemble and solo sheet music publications and numerous collaborative recordings with artists across the globe.