| Mace Francis | |
| Birth Date: | 23 August 1978 |
| Birth Place: | Geelong, Victoria, Australia |
| Instrument: | guitar, trombone |
| Associated Acts: | Mace Francis Orchestra, West Australian Youth Jazz Orchestra |
Mace Francis (born 1978) is an Australian composer, band director, and academic.[1]
Francis moved to Perth, Western Australia from Victoria in 2000 to study jazz composition and arranging. He graduated from WA Academy of Performing Arts in 2004 and completed a PhD at Edith Cowan University in 2015.[2]
In 2003 he was nominated for the Australian Jazz Bell Awards' Best Australian Jazz Song of the Year for Land Speed Record off his album of the same name[3] The album was recorded with a nonet in New York and included American saxophonist Jon Gordon.[4] It was released on Listen/Hear Collective, a record label run by Francis and Johannes Luebbers in Perth.[5]
In 2005 Francis formed the Mace Francis Orchestra and they released seven albums over the next 15 years.[6] Their album Music for Average Photography was nominated for two awards, making the 2016 Australian Jazz Bell Awards shortlist for Best Australian Jazz Ensemble,[7] and winning 2015's Art Music Awards for Jazz Work of the Year.[8]
Since 2008 Francis has been Artistic Director of the West Australian Youth Jazz Orchestra, and Musical Director for their Wednesday Night Orchestra.[9] [10] He has also held the position of Festival Director at the Perth International Jazz Festival since 2017 after the festivals founder and previous Festival Director Graham Wood died.[11]
For his 2021 album Isolation Emancipation, Francis recorded himself playing the trombone for the first time, after he began learning the instrument in 2015. The album was released with a new band Mace Francis Plus 11.[12]
| 2016 | Australian Jazz Bell Awards | Best Australian Jazz Ensemble | Music for Average Photography – Mace Francis Orchestra | Nominated | |
| 2015 | Art Music Awards | Jazz Work of the Year | Music for Average Photography | Won | |
| 2015 | WAM Song of the Year | Jazz Song of the Year | Corio Landscape | Nominated[13] | |
| 2013 | Australian Jazz Bell Awards | Best Australian Jazz Song of the Year | Land Speed Record | Nominated | |
| 2004 | APRA AMCOS | APRA Professional Development Award | Won |
From traffic rises: Site specificity and the compositional process (2016)
Music in Site: Integrating elements of site-specificity into composition (2015)
Site in Sound: A Review of Four Musical Works that Integrate Site Into Sound (2012) with Cat Hope
Bob Brookmeyer: composer, performer, pedagogue (2006)