Stuart Greenbaum grew up in Melbourne, his mother a trained classical pianist who taught music at Deakin University.[2] His original influences when young were pop, rock and blues, before later becoming interested in jazz.[2] Greenbaum went on to study composition with Brenton Broadstock and Barry Conyngham at the University of Melbourne. Greenbaum plays the piano, as well as the oboe and the electric guitar.[4]
He collaborated with the Melbourne poet Ross Baglin to create over 20 works, including 2 operas performed in Melbourne and London, an hour-long choral symphony, Brought to Light, premiered by Cantori New York in 2022, and several major choral works.[4][5][6]
The early 1990s saw Greenbaum producing a number of pieces for stage, including a time as the resident composer at the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne.[7] In 1993, as a young composer, he was commissioned to write Aaron Copland: In Memoriam, the first of a series of ten works commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation by young Australian composers.[8] One of his first major works to be commissioned was The Foundling, commissioned by Cantori New York in 1997, and From the Beginning commissioned for the sesquicentenary of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic in 2003.[9]
Greenbaum's work Nelson, a 3–act opera with libretto by Ross Baglin, was presented in London in 2005 and premiered in full at the 2007 Castlemaine State Festival.[10] He was a featured composer at the 2006 Aurora Festival. In 2007 he was commissioned by the artistic director of the Southern Cross Soloists to compose a work, Mondrian Interiors, featuring Marshall McGuire.[2]
His work 90 Minutes Circling the Earth was named Orchestral Work of the Year at the 2008 Classical Music Awards.[11] While it had been written in 1997, it was not recorded on CD till 10 years later, at which point it was brought to the attention of the judges.[4] In 2009 he was Australia's representative for the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange, working in Auckland with NZTrio on a new piano trio, The Year Without a Summer. This work toured nationally for Chamber Music New Zealand, in Sydney for the ISCM World New Music Days (2010) and internationally at the City of London Festival (2011).[12][13] In May 2024, Iranian-born Melbourne pianist, Amir Farid, gave the US premiere of Greenbaum’s half hour piano sonata Ice Man (1993) to a sell-out audience at Carnegie Hall.
