Composer

Andrea Breen is an Australian multi media artist with an interest in collaboration, performance and improvisation. For the past twenty years she has been creating acoustic art while researching the generative and interactive processes of sound, word, image and movement improvisation.

Breen has worked with international teachers of performance improvisation Andrew Morrish, Al Wunder, Peter Trotman and Ruth Zaporah and in 2003 established the Hobart women’s improvisation collective with co­improvisers Helen Swain, Leigh Tesch and Sally Edith. Her sound installations include: Small Daily Showings (MIECAT Gallery, Melbourne, 2013); Res/pond/ing (Jugglers Art Space, Brisbane 2010); Will the real Australia please stand up (University of Tasmania Gallery 1996 and Contemporary Art Space Tasmania 1997); improvisation­image­voice, a collaborative studio recording with Tasmanian poets (1999); and a performance in the national Improvisation Awards (on ABCFM Radio, 1999). She has devised, collaborated on and directed works for musical theatre (ClownPieces 2002) and dance (Conundrum 2001) for Hobart Fringe Festivals and has been a musician with Playback Theatre. Recordings from her experimental sound and poetry oeuvre are regularly broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s 'Sound Quality'. Breen is a Registered Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre, a psychotherapist, educator and occasional arts reviewer and is an external academic supervisor with MIECAT.

Breen completed a PhD (about women’s creativity and improvisation) at the University of Tasmania (2000). She studied composition with Don Kay (at the University of Tasmania) and with Ann Ghandar and Peter McNamara (at the University of New England: Bachelor of Music (Honours), Composition and Performance 2004). She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours), an Associate Diploma in Music (violin), a Diploma of Teaching, a Graduate Diploma in Creative Arts Therapy (MIECAT, Victoria) and a Graduate Certificate in Gestalt Therapy. She studied violin and viola with Elizabeth Morgan and John Curro (in Brisbane), Simon Oswell and Jan Sedivka (in Hobart) and Stella Nemet (in Melbourne).