Martin Wesley-Smith AM (10 June 1945 – 26 September 2019) was an Australian composer with an eclectic output ranging from children's songs to environmental events.
[1] Two main themes dominated Wesley-Smith's music: the life, work and ideas of Lewis Carroll, and the plight of the people of East Timor.
His father was the Academic Registrar of the University of Adelaide, and his mother was a teacher and a presenter of the ABC's radio program Kindergarten of the Air.
From his student days, Wesley-Smith was a rebel, moonlighting on the banjo with a folkie band, the Wesley Three, when his teachers would have preferred he focus on his classical studies.
Its subject is a young East Timorese refugee, Francisco Baptista Pires ("Quito"), a sufferer of schizophrenia who was found hanged in a Darwin hospital.
"[6] The clarinettist Ros Dunlop commissioned Papua Merdeka, which Wesley-Smith described as "a piece about the West Papuan people and their thirst for freedom".
He was also musical director of TREE, a group whose final environmental event was held at Wattamolla Beach in Sydney's Royal National Park in 1983.
[3] The Song Company has performed his work in Amsterdam, den Bosch, Denmark, Gent, Groningen, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Portugal, as well as throughout Australia.
[8] It was founded by the Australia Council in honour of Don Banks, Australian composer, performer and the first chair of its music board.