Michael Smetanin is one of most distinctive figures among Australian composers. Born in Sydney in 1958 of Russian parents, he completed his Bachelor of Music in Composition at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in 1981 winning several young composers' prizes.

In 1982, having been awarded an International Fellowship by the Music Board of the Australia Council, Smetanin went to study with leading Dutch Composer Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatorium in the Hague. Further awards from the Netherlands Ministry of Education and Science, and the Amsterdam Foundation for Arts Funds enabled him to spend two and a half years studying with Andriessen until December 1984.

While studying in Holland, Smetanin composed his first major work, "Track" in collaboration with the ensemble Hoketus and in 1984 he wrote "the ladder of escape" for Harry Sparnaay's "Het Basklarienetten Kollektief". This work was premiered at the 1984 Salzburg Aspekete Festival in Austria and has since received many performances all over the world.

Since Michael Smetanin returned to Australia late in 1984, his work has continued to gather awards and receive performances internationally, including the recently awarded, 1999 Paul Lowin Prize for Orchestral Composition, (Australia's richest music award) for the work "the shapes of things to pass".

His two largest works are the chamber opera "the burrow", with libretto by Alison Croggon, which is a "psychological profile" of Franz Kafka during his last minutes of life. It created a sensation when it was premiered at the 1994 Perth Festival, with Lyndon Terracini as Kafka, and his second opera "Gauguin" which was completed in March 1997 and received its first production in the 2000 Melbourne Festival.

Michael Smetanin is currently working on the creation of a Music-Drama work for Television with London based director David Freeman and was a member of the jury for the International Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam) for 1999. Recently he was a guest teacher at the "5th International Young Composers Meeting" at Apeldoorn in Holland and is a lecturer in composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Australia.