Dr Alexander Hunter is a composer and academic with Scottish, German and Red River Métis heritage based on unceded Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country at the Australian National University.
He studied composition with David Maki (2002–06), Stephen Davismoon (2007–10) and Katrina Burton (2007–13), composition, double bass performance, and ethnomusicology at Northern Illinois University, and received a PhD in composition from Edinburgh Napier University.
Hunter founded the ANU Experimental Music Studio and is a member of the Sound, Music, and Creative Computing Lab where he collaborates on projects including those utilising AI performance tools and early musical instruments. He is a Lecturer in Composition at the ANU School of Music, where he has grown the undergraduate composition programme and pioneered decolonising approaches to music theory and aural skills curriculum.
His interests as a performer, composer, researcher, and educator centre around anarchic modes of collaboration including improvised and dynamic musics in both video game and live performance contexts. As a composer he is drawn to open works which make use of indeterminacy and discontinuity, and non-hierarchical social structures — works intended to be approachable by and interesting to both virtuosi and non-virtuosi, especially student and amateur ensembles. His work often involves mobile moment form structures informed by harmonic spectra, featuring self-directed ensembles.
As a performer, Alexander is an active improviser and interpreter of new music. He has developed a long-running collaborative magic lantern performance practice with lanternist and media archaeologist Martyn Jolly, and performs as one half of the duo Andromeda is Coming with Dr Charles Martin.
He is a founding member of Collected Resonances, a Canberra-based independent label and collective for experimental music and sound art.
Alexander is a recipient of the CASS Dean’s Commendation for Teaching Excellence (2020) and was nominated for the ANU Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2021). He serves as an APRA Art Music Awards judge (Experimental Music and Jazz categories) and as a peer assessor for artsACT.
Current Ongoing Collaborations
- Ongoing collaboration with glass and video artist Ngaio Fitzpatrick (ANU Climate Change Institute)
- Ongoing collaboration with lanternist and media archaeologist Martyn Jolly using historic magic lanterns and electroacoustic music
- Ongoing human–AI improvisation research with Dr Charles Martin (ANU School of Computing)
Formal Qualifications
- PhD, Music Composition, Edinburgh Napier University, 2014
- HNC, Gaelic Music and Recording Techniques, Colàiste Bheinn na Faoghla, University of the Highlands and Islands, 2007
- BA, Anthropology and Music, Northern Illinois University, 2006
ORCID: 0000-0003-2448-5164 · ANU Researchers Page
Alexander Hunter acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which he lives and works, and pays respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Alexander Hunter 