Sven Libaek
| Sven Libaek | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 20, 1938 |
| Genres | Film scores |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, conductor, producer |
| Years active | 1958–present |
Sven Libaek is an Australian composer, record producer and musician. He is well known for his film and TV soundtrack music and also had a significant influence on the Australian popular music scene in the mid-1960s as the staff producer for the Australian division of CBS Records.
Libaek was born in Norway in 1938, trained as both a pianist and an actor and is a graduate of the Juilliard School in New York. He first achieved international recognition with a role in the Louis de Rochemont film Windjammer in which he both acted and performed as piano soloist with Arthur Fiedler and The Boston Pops Orchestra.
Libaek first came to Australia in 1960 as a member of the band the Windjammers, which toured the United States and Australia to promote the film. Shortly after the group broke up, Libaek and his wife returned to Australia to live.
In 1963 Libaek was hired by the newly established CBS Records (Australia), which had been incorporated following the 1960 takeover of the Australian Record Company by Columbia Records in the United States. During his tenure as musical director and A&R manager for CBS (as well as general manager for April Music Publishing in Sydney) Libaek built up a strong roster of pop, folk and jazz performers and produced over two hundred singles and albums, as well as writing (or co-writing with his wife) many of the titles he produced. His CBS credits include producing all the CBS recordings by surf music band the Atlantics including their hit "Bombora", folk musicians Gary Shearston and Patsy Biscoe. He left CBS in 1968 to work as a freelance composer, arranger, conductor and established his own music production company.
Libaek's Australian film and TV credits include Nickel Queen, The Set, To Ride A White Horse, Vincent Serventy's oft-repeated nature series Nature Walkabout, the drama series Boney, the Ron and Valerie Taylor underwater documentary series Inner Space, ABC-TV's magazine series A Big Country, The World Around Us, Joe Wilson and The Settlement, as well as dozens of feature documentaries and industrial films. He worked with Maurice Jarre as musical co-ordinator and orchestrator for the Peter Weir film The Year of Living Dangerously and also hosted his own TV show on ABC-TV, All About Music, in 1974.
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