Composer/Producer/Educator
Gary composes and produces acoustic, electroacoustic and electronic music for live performance, contemporary dance and short film. He played woodwinds in the pre-punk/satire band ‘The Fathers of Modern Medicine’, before studying music composition, synthesis and sound engineering at La Trobe University (1989 – 1995).
His compositions have been performed at Victoria College of the Arts, Festival Gippsland, Melbourne Uni’s Guild Dance, La Trobe Uni’s Moat Fest, TheatreWorks and in eXstatic for Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival and at PICA, Dance House and Laneways for the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Horsham Arts Festival ‘Shopfronts’ Exhibition, ‘Sonic Residues’ at Linden Gallery, ‘Mosaics’ at Richmond Town Hall with the ‘Melbourne Composers’ League’ (MCL), The Australian Gallery at National Gallery Victoria and Chapel off Chapel with the ‘Contemporary Composers’ Collective’, at Melba Hall for ‘Federation Music Week’ (MCL), in multiple Elbow Room Concerts (MCL) at Budinski’s, Cafe Bohemio, Upstairs Cafe, Wesley-Anne, Montsalvat and at St Peter’s Church Box Hill (1996 to 2021), TropScore/TropFest (2012) and at the Australian Computer Music Association ACMA Conference ’60×60 (2014).
Gary’s compositions have been played on radio on ‘Delivery’ on 3RRR FM, ‘Other Worlds’ on ABC Radio National and on the ‘Australian Music Show’ on ABC Classic FM, ‘Music Sans Frontieres’ and ‘Music Matters’ on 3CR and on ‘The Sound Barrier’ on 3PBS FM. His music can be heard on MCL CD Compilations – ‘Rear Vision’ (2008) & ‘Celebrating Twenty Years’ (2017), both with the Melbourne Composers League. Some of his compositions are also available at the Australian Music Centre, with more of his music available at: silonicssonics.bandcamp.com
He taught music and directed student bands and choirs for 22 years (1998 – 2020), which included ten years teaching Instrumental Music at Rainbow, Hopetoun and Warracknabeal Secondary Colleges in the Wimmera/Mallee. Gary completed a Grad Dip Ed at La Trobe University (2008), then taught Classroom and Instrumental Music for twelve years at various Primary Schools around Melbourne, including at The Lakes South Morang P-4, Lower Plenty PS, Panton Hills PS, St Andrews PS, Brunswick North West PS, Oak Park PS and at Moomba Park PS. In 2019, he created ‘Seascapes’ with artist in residence, Fern Smith and prep and grade 1 and 2 students at Moomba Park Primary School, as the soundtrack for ‘The Sea is Sinking’ exhibition in Coburg. Gary sang in the Bolte Millennium Chorus choir in ‘One Africa’ at Hamer Hall with Lamine Sonka, Andrea Khoza and diverse African artists (2015). In 2021, he was Artistic Director/Composer for The Whittlesea Sound Project, supported by a grant from the Whittlesea Creative Communities Fund, which was housed on SoundCloud and featured as a sound installation in the UNPAUSED Art Exhibition in 2022. In 2023, Gary composed the eight track work ‘Fire Country’ for the Reimagining Landscapes Concert, as part of Johanna Selleck and Amos Roach’s Creative Residency at the Grainger Museum, Melbourne University and for the related Reimagining Landscapes Exhibition at The Octagon, Victoria College of the Arts. In 2024, he worked as composer and sound engineer on the short film directed by Anne Algar on Antarctica called ‘Breaking Ice’, which was featured in Ann’e Antarctica Photographic Exhibition at One Star Galley in North Melbourne. In 2025, Gary’s ‘Fire Swirls’ [Mosaic 1] composition from ‘Fire Country’ was included in the ‘Parallel Universes’ Concert at CAN, Church of All Nations, Carlton, a musique concrete and electroacoustic concert of works by composers from Melbourne and Rome, Italy. ‘Sirens’ Lament of Beauty, Seduction, Deception and Oblivion’, a musique concéte work developed from variations of a time-stretched cicada sample, premiered at CAN in October, 2025. Gary had some of his art photos, videos and audio works included in the sound/art exhibition ‘Resonant Spaces’ at Turbo Gallery, Rainbow, in Western Victoria, from mid February to mid March, 2026. The ‘Parallel Universes’ Concert is touring to Folderol Studios/Gallery in Rome, Italy in 2026.
Link to: The Whittlesea Sound Project
BANDCAMP
SILONICS aka Gary McKie is a composer/producer who has notated scores for instrumental performance, but prefers to work directly with sound, experimenting with instrumental timbres, field recordings, improvisation, synthesis and effects, to create original soundscapes, producing soundtracks for contemporary art-dance performances and generating new musical moods to take us somewhere else.
Contact Details
glitchtone@duck.com