Careline Szeto Careline Szeto

Careline Szeto is a Sydney-born composer. Szeto graduated from the University of Sydney, where Szeto studied with Eric Gross and Peter Sculthorpe, and has taught harmony at the University of Sydney.

Szeto has received many awards and honors, including a fellowship from the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize and the Donald Peart Memorial Prize.

Szeto was twice selected for the National Orchestral Composer’s School, where the orchestral works Energy (1990) and Energy II (1994) were performed. These two works, together with ABC Fanfare, a commission for the 60th anniversary of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, are performed regularly. Szeto's orchestral works have been performed by the Tasmanian, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland Symphony Orchestras. Both Energy and ABC Fanfare were performed at the Second International Festival of New Music for Orchestra in the Czech Republic.

Some of Szeto's works draw on Chinese elements. Images of Li Po, for example, uses Tang poetry together with Chinese harmony and musical structures; The Third Station of the Cross and many other works employ Chinese rhythmic elements; Energy makes use of a Chinese character; and Chinese harmonic shapes appear in many works, including the piano piece Yunny’s Treat.