The Eternity Man - Biographies

Jonathan Mills, Composer (Australian)

Jonathan Mills is a composer and pianist who lives in Melbourne. He studied composition at the University of Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe, and piano and composition in Italy with Lydia Arcuri - Baldecchi.

In addition to his musical qualifications he holds a Masters of Architecture degree in environmental acoustics. His music makes extensive use of his research into instrument design. He is well known as a music director having recently concluded a two-year position as Artistic Director of the Melbourne Festival.

Jonathan has worked as a composer in a variety of media, and recent works include:

• Ethereal Eye, an electro-acoustic dance opera in collaboration with choreographer Nanette Hassall, Synergy Percussion and Leigh Warren & Dancers for the 1996 Adelaide Festival.
• The Ghost Wife, a chamber opera with Dorothy Porter, librettist. First production at the 1999 Melbourne Festival, it has subsequently been performed at 2000 Adelaide Festival and 2001 Sydney Festival.
• Sandakan Threnody for tenor, chorus and orchestra. Commissioned by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the Adelaide Chamber Singers.

He currently holds the post of Adjunct Professor in Acoustic Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Dorothy Porter, Librettist (Australian)

Dorothy Porter was born in Sydney, Australia in 1954. She has published five books of poetry, three verse novels and two novels for young adults.

Having already been critically acclaimed prior to the release of The Monkey's Mask, it is this crime thriller in verse that has set her on course for international recognition. She received the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award for The Monkey's Mask, which was also published in North America, Holland, Germany, Italy and the UK (where it was nominated as one of the Best Books of the Year by The Times). It has been adapted for stage and radio, and a feature film of it was released internationally in 2001.

In 2000 Dorothy Porter became the only poet ever to be short-listed - with the verse novel What a Piece of Work - for Australia's premiere literary prize for fiction, the Miles Franklin Award. Dorothy Porter's next verse novel, for publication in 2002, will be called Wild Surmise. It is about the search for extra-terrestrial life, death, marriage and adultery.

The Ghost Wife, an opera by Jonathan Mills, for which Porter wrote the libretto, was performed all over Australia to enthusiastic, popular and critical reaction.

Her most recent collection of poetry, Other Worlds, was published in August 2001. Dorothy Porter now lives in Melbourne.