Sven Erik Libaek was born on 20 September 1938 and is a Norwegian-Australian composer, record producer and musician.
11 Facts About Sven Libaek
1.
2.
Sven Libaek composes film and TV soundtrack music and, as the staff producer for the Australian division of CBS Records, influenced the Australian popular music scene in the mid-1960s.
3.
Sven Libaek 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.
4.
Sven 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.
5.
In 1963 Sven Libaek was hired by the newly established CBS Records, which had been incorporated following the 1960 takeover of the Australian Record Company by Columbia Records in the United States.
6.
Sven Libaek left CBS in 1968 to work as a freelance composer, arranger, conductor and established his own music production company.
7.
Sven Libaek worked with Maurice Jarre as musical co-ordinator and orchestrator for the Peter Weir film The Year of Living Dangerously and hosted his own TV show on ABC-TV, All About Music, in 1974.
8.
Sven Libaek lived and worked in Los Angeles from 1977 to 1994 where he orchestrated more than 300 popular songs for US radio stations and artists including Lionel Richie and Neil Diamond, and he worked for the Hanna-Barbera company, composing the scores for all of the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 animated TV movies.
9.
Sven Libaek's has composed concert works for instruments including the piano, classical guitar, flute and clarinet and he is the resident conductor of Sydney's Sutherland Shire Symphony Orchestra.
10.
Sven Libaek has taught piano at Shore School, acts as composer-in-residence at Port Hacking High School and frequently lectures at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney.
11.
Sven Libaek has been a member of the Music Arrangers Guild of Australia for over thirty years, joined the national executive in 1996 and was elected president of the guild in 2000.