Born May 28 1935, Derek Strahan's childhood was spent in colonial Malaya until 1942 when his family evacuated to Perth, WA. From 1946 he was based in Northern Ireland receiving education at Campbell College, Belfast and later at Cambridge University graduating in 1956 (BA Cantab. Modern Languages). Returning to Australia in 1962 he worked in Sydney writing film scores and concert works while working as actor, teacher, film director, scriptwriter and singer/songwriter. As a writer he has previously written widely for TV and film, for documentries, film and for numerous TV series including 5 years writing over 200 episodes for the notorious Australian TV series “Number 96”. As a composer his film music has been heard internationally on over 30 Australian Film & TV documentaries and on 3 feature films, which he also scripted. He has received commissions from distinguished artists including Lauris Elms AM OBE, Michael Scott (flute), Alan Vivian (clarinet) and Georg Pedersen (cellist). These range through chamber, solo instrumental, vocal, symphonic works including his Clarinet Concerto No. 1, premiered 2001 by Alan Vivian at the ANU School of Music and in the US by Luxmusicae in San Antonio. Texas. Recordings of his works are frequently heard on national and fine music radio stations. Strahan does not subscribe to any particular school, style or set of musical dogmas. He is concerned to retain melodic lyricism, and to achieve harmonic liberation through a synthesis of melodic and metric polyphony. Musical material for various opera projects is in progress for which he has already written libretti, currently available as plays, along with a bunch of comedy stage plays and musicals many of which are available online through BookBaby and partrners.