Libby Myers is a guitarist, improvisor, composer, music researcher and educator from Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia.
She has a passion for contemporary music and experimentation, having given world premieres of solo, chamber and orchestral works for classical and electric guitar throughout Australia and abroad.
Her debut solo album Unfettered and Alive, released by Made Now Music, was shortlisted in the 2023 Queensland Music Awards. As an improviser, she has collaborated with artists of disparate genres and disciplines, and it is in this mode of collaborative creativity she feels most at home. She has premiered her own experimental, improvisation-led compositions on both classical and electric guitar that explore open notation, effects, gesture and objects.
Libby is a versatile and adventurous collaborator, having worked with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Opera Queensland in the premiere of new opera, post-classical indie septet Nonsemble, the Riverside Guitar Ensemble, contemporary classical Postcards trio of UK-based Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and in demand Australian pianist Alex Raineri, composer and visual artist Frankie Dyson-Reilly, and trombonist Brodie McAllister’s Wattle large jazz ensemble. In 2024 she will continue collaborations with artists in electronic and experimental popular music fields, and will be a mentor at the Dots+Loops NONSTOP festival where she will premiere new commissions for solo guitar written by the festival’s Composition Fellows.
Libby has toured and performed throughout Australia with the Rosa Guitar Trio, with whom she was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The trio released the album Brasiliana which featured their signature interpretations of traditional Brazilian music and was supported by Musica Viva on a tour through regional Australia.
Libby’s research focuses on musical identities and experimentation through the lens of musical alchemy, using innovative artistic and narrative research methods. Her work explores methods centring the tacit knowledge of performers through artistic research and musicology, with recent projects examining materiality, meta-modernism and spirituality in music. She has served as an intern to the editorial board of the Journal for Artistic Research, and has worked as a research assistant on transdisciplinary projects in fields of arts-health and arts-ecology research.
She is an experienced and passionate music educator, currently tutoring in contemporary, practice-led approaches to music theory and aural skills at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music Griffith University. Libby also teaches and directs award-winning student ensembles in high schools throughout Brisbane and through the Young Conservatorium outreach program. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Griffith University and masters degrees from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain, and the University of Queensland, where she researched on the application of acting techniques to musical performance.