George Galanis was born in Melbourne in 1959. He started playing the violin when he was four years old, and the piano when he was five, initially taught by his father and later studying piano and music theory with Joan Voumard, a leading piano teacher in Melbourne. He received numerous commendations including winning the Musical Society of Victoria’s ‘Herbert Davis Award’ for piano in 1973. He gained his AMusA at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music in 1977. He then studied Computer Science at Monash University and learned to fly aeroplanes, earning his Commercial Pilot’s License in 1986. For almost two decades the skies above Melbourne—and other parts of Australia—were George’s workplace. During that time he studied for his Doctorate of Philosophy at the RMIT University, writing his thesis on human perception and drawing on the fields of mathematics, control engineering and psychology. He currently lives in Adelaide where he heads a group of scientists involved in research in the field of simulation and training.
During his career George has always had a piano nearby, as well as various synthesizers, tape recorders, and other music studio gear. In recent years George has been experimenting with computers and their ability to produce music.
