His distinctive sound world reflects his interest in deep ecology and his belief in the need to reconnect music with elemental forces, as well as restore its traditional association with ritual and dance.

At 15 years of age, Edwards was granted permission to enter the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music to study piano, oboe, harmony, counterpoint and theory during lunch hours and weekends.

[6] A further Commonwealth Scholarship enabled Edwards to complete his studies with Peter Maxwell Davies in London in 1970, earning a Master of Music degree,[3] after which he spent 18 months composing at a remote Yorkshire farmhouse.

Working from their home in the coastal village of Pearl Beach, Edwards and his wife Helen, a piano teacher, led an idyllic and productive life until the education of their two children necessitated moving back to Sydney in 1984.

Reclusive by nature, Ross Edwards has largely eschewed following a career path as such, neglecting to promote his work and responding mainly to the inner dictates of his vocation.

"[9] Far from being isolationist, however, the surface of Edwards' music is often highly eclectic, making oblique references to many cultures in what he describes as an "intuitive search for unity within diversity".

[13] The composition of Dawn Mantras, Sydney's contribution to the millennium celebrations, was telecast worldwide to an audience of billions, attracting great international acclaim.

[15] Another notable success was the 2010 UK premiere of the violin concerto Maninyas, given at the 2010 Edinburgh International Festival by its dedicatee, Dene Olding, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

I don’t doubt that, over the millennia, such voices have generated much of the world’s music and it’s not hard to detect their presence in various surviving folk and religious traditions".

In what seemed like a moment of sheer revelation, the outside world burst in on me and I suddenly became aware that I had the extraordinary privilege of living in a paradise of sun-blessed ocean and joyously shrieking parrots gyrating in the warm air, and that this ecstasy simply had to be transmitted through music.

In the 1980s, the response to his music began to gain momentum, divided between the enthusiasm of those who perceived it as fresh direction – "a statement of independence from the impetus of cultural globalism" – and those who saw it as "a betrayal of Modernist idealism".

Throughout the 1980s, the shapes, rhythms and temporal relationships Edwards subconsciously gleaned from walking in the Brisbane Water National Park began increasingly to inform the structure and texture of his music, which took on the character of angular, animated chant, with subtly varied repetition of rhythmic cells over elaborated drones.

This "dance-chant", as he called it, sometimes mistakenly aligned with the minimalist movement, was closely examined by Paul Stanhope, who claimed that it suggested ritualistic behaviour.

While its quirky rhythms and chirpy, pentatonic melodic shapes are antithetical to the austere spiritual quietude of the sacred series, the maninya style also has its origin in nature, bringing the drones of insects and cicadas, the calls of birds and the mysterious temporal proportions into the concert hall.

In his study, Beyond Sacred and Maninyas, Philip Cooney maintains that these pieces may be seen as move towards a fusion of opposites, a steady progression towards the world of the later symphonies and concerti, where Edwards has been concerned with achieving greater richness and breadth.

Cultural symbols such as the Virgin Mary and her Eastern equivalent, Guanyin, goddess of compassion, make frequent appearance in the guise of the Earth Mother, protector and nurturer of the environment – Edwards' work has always had a strongly ecological focus.

Years later he re-established contact with Dr Graham Williams, a friend from student days, who had given up his career as a pianist to train as a meditation teacher in the Burmese and Tibetan traditions.