Yvette Audain

Yvette Audain was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, where prior to her Australian arrival in January 2012, she had invested in a career as a busy, renowned musician and composer.

Yvette, whose instruments are clarinet, saxophones, recorders and Irish whistles, has worked professionally in a variety of genres: classical (Auckland Philharmonia; New Zealand Opera), military band (the full-time Royal New Zealand Navy Band), Celtic-style originals (trio ‘Doris’), gypsy (the Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band), and many more situations in between.

However, Yvette’s principal performance interest is early jazz. She has had the honour of leading the reed section of Brett’s New Internationals, New Zealand’s only authentic 1920s dance orchestra, developing her stylistic knowledge through transcribing and learning by ear solos by such masters as Johnny Hodges and Coleman Hawkins. Yvette subsequently went on to lead a smaller ensemble affiliated to ‘APOPS’, the Auckland Philharmonia (APO) education programme, performing to school audiences around the Auckland region. So far in Melbourne, Yvette has become a member of the all-female Dixieland jazz band Frilly Knickers, and is in the process of forming her own smaller jazz ensembles and duos.

Yvette enjoys a productive, ever-rewarding career as a composer – a recent achievement in this area includes having her work ‘Eulogy’ read and recorded by the APO in their 2010 Graduate Composer Workshop. The work was programmed in the APO concert ‘Works With Words’ in association with the 2011 Readers and Writers’ Festival. Since 2008 she has been a member of the APO’s talented team of arrangers, and has had another commission ‘Felix the Cat: The Magic Bag’ (score for short cartoon film) performed by the APO Wind Quintet.
March 2011 brought the impressively well-attended ‘Grooves Unspoken: Music by Yvette Audain’, a self-curated programme consisting entirely of Yvette’s own music, at St Lukes Church, Remuera, Auckland. This was in proud association with the 2011 Auckland Fringe Festival.

Yvette holds a Bachelor of Music in composition and clarinet from the University of Auckland, and a Bachelor of Music (First Class Honours) in composition and ethnomusicology from Victoria University of Wellington, where she subsequently completed her Master of Music (with Merit) in composition.

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