Bruce Clarke has been at the forefront of the Australian guitar and contemporary music scenes since he entered the profession in 1949. A list of his musical associates would read like a "Who's-who" of Music Down Under. Until 1956, he worked as a freelance guitarist-arranger among the many orchestras that found employment on the live radio shows, backing overseas artists on concert tour and in the dance halls and ballrooms that were the mainstay of pre-television social life.

In 1956, television brought this era to a close and Bruce moved into a different sphere -- film and television music production and composition. This period served as a transition into the establishment of his own studios and production company in 1957 - a production company for which he wrote and directed over 3000 television and film soundtracks for local and overseas producers over the following seventeen years.

During these hectic "commercial" years he kept up an association with the creative cutting-edge of music by acting as president of the International Society Of Contemporary Music (Vic.), accepting a commission to realise the first major Australian electronic work for the 1968 Adelaide Arts Festival, and conducted many first Melbourne performances of Stockhausen, Berio and Webern, and toured Europe as guitarist with Felix Werder's "Australia Felix ensemble". In association with the Australian Broadcasting Commission symphony orchestras, he has appeared under the batons of Sir John Barbirolli, Charles Mackerras, John Hopkins and others. In 1981 he played second guitar to John Williams with the M.S.O. in Andre Previn's "Concerto For Guitar And Orchestra".

Meanwhile in 1974, another turn of events had moved Bruce into the realm of teaching. Phasing out his commercial activities he accepted a position on the music board of the Australia Council and became Kenneth Myer Music Fellow to the Victoria Institute of Colleges - two positions which made him very aware of the need for more realistic approaches to the problems of students wishing to find a role in the highly-competitive world of "non-classical" music. With this in mind, in 1977 he instigated the now firmly established Jazz Studies program at the Victorian College Of The Arts.

While his output includes Jazz Studies 1 (pub. Allans Music) and many other study materials and recordings he is probably best known to many through his recording and setting for guitar, harpsichord and strings of Michel Legrand's "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life" which sounded out nightly for many years across Australia as the A.B.C. radio theme for lan Neil's Music To Midnight program. From his catalogue of recorded works the author quotes his collaboration with George Golla on "In Memory Of Charlie Christian" (aka "Soft Winds" CQCD-2712) as his favorite to date. Incidentally the same duo made "low-profile" TV history in 1983 by performing an unrehearsed improvised duet with one guitarist being in Sydney and the other in the TV network's Melbourne studios.

Joe Washington