Composer, conductor, arranger and former Scotch Music Captain, Nick Buc (’99) has maintained an active career in the music scene for the past 20 years, both in Australia and overseas. He taught Composition at Scotch College for 10 years before relocating to New York in 2014 to complete a Master’s degree in Scoring for Film and Multimedia at NYU, where he received the Elmer Bernstein Award for Film Scoring. In a 20-year career, Nick has composed orchestral and choral music, and scores for film and television, as well as conducting many orchestras at home and overseas.
His music career is wide and varied, touching all sides of the industry from conducting some of the world’s major symphony orchestras to arranging concerts for pop idols such as Tina Arena and Nick Cave. He has worked with trumpet legend Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, singer/pianist extraordinaire Ben Folds, and written arrangements for Birds of Tokyo, Missy Higgins, Eskimo Joe and The Whitlams, as well as working on five seasons of The Voice Australia.
In 2023, Nick participated in our Foundation Day Concert at Hamer Hall on 29 August. He was one of the accompanists for the College Choir’s two songs and was solo accompanist for the two songs performed by the Chamber Choir.
This year, Nick will make his conducting debut with the San Francisco Symphony and Atlanta Symphony in the US, as well as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the UK. He has written the music for the world premiere of a new concert experience for children, Daughter of the Inner Stars, marrying live narration and animation with a unique orchestral score that will be performed by the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House in August.
