Chris Dench has been played on NTS in shows including Slime w/ Little, featured first on 28 March 2021. Songs played include Pianississimo: A Sonata For Piano (1970).

Self-taught composer Chris Dench was born in London in 1953. He arrived in Australia after living in West Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm, becoming an Australian citizen in 1992.

Dench has been commissioned to write works for various organisations and ensembles. His work Symphony 4 - propriocepts for four amplified voices and large orchestra was commissioned by the ABC and premiered by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Porcelijn in April 1997. He has been commissioned by the ELISION Ensemble on numerous occasions, resulting in works such as driftglass, ik(s)land(s) and quattro frammenti. His works have been performed across Australia and internationally by ensembles such as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Topologies, the London Sinfonietta and Ensemble InterContemporain.

He has been the subject of 'composer portrait' concerts under the auspices of the Almeida Festival in London ('86), the Kunst im Wissenschaftszentrum series in Berlin ('89), the Huddersfield Festival ('92), and the debut concert of Ensemble Topologies in London ('95). His works have been presented at such events as the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, the Hong Kong ISCM/ACL World Music Days and the Damstadt Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik (at which he was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis of composition in '84).

Between 1986 and 1991 he wrote a series of four large-scale solo flute works: Vier Darmstadter Aphorismen, de/ploye, sulle scale della Fenice and Closing Lemma, which Paul Griffiths has called 'important' and 'remarkable' in his book Modern Music and After. Other works such as planetary allegiances, driftglass and funk have been used in television productions both in Australia and the UK.

ELISION's performance of funk won the 1996 Sounds Australian Award for best performance of an Australian Work. Symphony 4 - propriocepts received one of two High Commendations in the '97 Triennial Paul Lowin Awards; it also received the '98 Victorian State Sounds Australian Award for Best Work Composed by an Australian.

Since the middle nineties he has been engaged on a review of his notational systems with the intent of simplifying the means by which musical ideas are presented to the player without compromise of the compositional substance.

His music is published variously by United Music Publishers, 42 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3BN, Red House Editions, Melbourne, and all scores are available from the Australian Music Centre; driftglass is published by BMG, Rome. His works have appeared on a number of CD labels, notably a collection of his flute works on Etcetera.

[Biography provided by the composer and current to 2001.]