Malcolm Tattersall was born in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia, and grew up in country Victoria. He worked for a few years in electronics and computing in Melbourne before commencing studies in music at Melbourne University in 1976. After a decade teaching recorder in Melbourne, he moved to Townsville, North Queensland, with his family in 1990.

Although he was primarily a teacher and performer for twenty-five years and is still actively involved in music, writing has been a regular activity for almost as long and has become a major part of his work. To deal with them separately:

Music - performance, teaching and composition

Malcolm was one of the foundation recorder students at Melbourne University. As an undergraduate there he also studied composition with Barry Conyngham and Peter Tahourdin.

He has maintained an active interest in composing and arranging, especially for woodwinds, and established Cootamundra Music in 1982 to publish his music. His performing and compositional activities came together in 2002 in his first CD, Music for Reflection. He has been broadcast as both performer and composer by ABC Classic FM and ABC local radio 4QN. He is a writer member of APRA and is represented by the Australian Music Centre.

He teaches recorder, flute, saxophone and clarinet in Townsville schools and privately, and has performed regularly in ensembles including Blue Moon and baroque chamber group The Telemann Ensemble (recorder and flute). He has also sung with the Oratorio Choir, 1993-97 and again in 2006, and played baritone sax in the Stokes-Nicholson Big Band, 1997-2004.

Amongst other activities he instigated the formation of the North Queensland Recorder Society in the mid-1990s and a long-running concert series presented by the local Music Centre.

Writing - about music and other subjects

Malcolm contributed regularly to The Recorder, the de facto national journal for Early Music, from its first issue in 1984, going on to edit it and to write for many other music journals including The Australian Music Teacher and Sounds Australian. His reviewing gradually extended beyond the recorder and early music sphere to cover a wide variety of classical CDs for Music & Vision (online, London-based) and Music Forum (print, Australian).

His interests have always been broad. He has read widely in science, especially its history; religion and philosophy; fantasy and SF; and literary fiction. He finds most naturalistic fiction dull but believes that a good childrens' book is a good book and enjoys historical fiction, police procedurals and thrillers. All of this made it natural for him to take up reviewing for his local newspaper, the Townsville Bulletin, in 2004 when time became available. He has also contributed to Teacher, Viewpoint, Australian Rationalist, and The Helix.

At the end of 2004 he learned enough HTML to create this web site and has been adding to it steadily ever since. He has participated in various writers' workshops, most recently 'Writing for the Web' presented by Dey Alexander at James Cook University in June 2007 and 'Feature Writing' presented by Queensland Writers' Centre in April 2008.

Memberships

Queensland Writers Centre (since 2005)
Australian Performing Rights Association (writer member, since 2003)
Australian Music Centre (since 1985; represented composer since 2003)

Editorial work

Publisher of Australian music for recorders, trading as Cootamundra Music, since 1982.
Editor of The Recorder, journal of the Victorian Recorder Guild, 1989-93.
Consultant and a syllabus writer for major revision of AMEB recorder syllabuses, 1984-90.

Publications

Even a minimally representative list of Malcolm's publications is quite long, so each category has its own page:

Contact:

9 Water St,
Mundingburra,
Queensland 4812
Australia

M Tattersall email as graphic

Updated 22 August 2008

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