James Ledger
Australian composer
James Ledger (born 1966) is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music, and senior lecturer in composition at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Western Australia, where he is chair of orchestral composition.
Biography
Ledger first rose to prominence with his first orchestral composition Indian Pacific in 1996, which is still regularly performed in Australia. Ledger is also known for his compositions Devils in the Underground for solo trumpet, the violin concerto Golden Years, Chronicles for orchestra, War Music for choir and orchestra, and the song cycle Conversations with Ghosts in collaboration with the musician Paul Kelly, for which he won an ARIA award.
From 2007 to 2009 he was the composer-in-residence for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. In 2011 he was named composer-in-residence for the Australian National Academy of Music.
In 2019 Ledger won the ARIA Award for Best Classical Album for Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds, another collaboration with Paul Kelly.
In 2020, he earned a Doctorate of Music from the University of Western Australia. His Viola Concerto, premiered by Brett Dean and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, won the APRA AMCOS Art Music award in the "Work of the Year – Large Ensemble" category.
Awards and nominations
ARIA Music Awards
The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “James Ledger” as australian composer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24053952. VIAF identifies the subject as 256826178. The Library of Congress control number is no2007021338. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1996, 2007 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Ledger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.