Iain Grandage recently completed a five year tenure as Artistic Director of the Perth Festival (2020-2024) where he was celebrated for bringing a sweeping sense of place to the Festivals he curated, with a strong commitment to Noongar artists and stories standing alongside events of scale like Highway to Hell.  Previously, he has been Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, curated the fine music program for the Adelaide Festival (Chamber Landscapes), been Composer-in-Residence with the WA Symphony Orchestra, been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from UWA, received the prestigious Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award and been West Australian of the Year for Arts & Culture in 2023. 

In the 2025 King's Birthday Honours, Grandage was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, for significant service to the arts as a composer and artistic director.

He has conducted orchestras in London, Berlin, Amsterdam and around Australia for projects with artists including Gurrumul, Kate Miller-Heidke, Meow Meow and Tim Minchin. As music director, he has won Helpmann Awards for his work with Meow Meow’s Little Match Girl, Sydney Theatre Company’s The Secret River and was music director and arranger for Opera Australia’s critically lauded new opera The Rabbits  by Kate Miller-Heidke and Lally Katz. He has conducted and presented for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Education program and is a highly regarded communicator on music and the arts more broadly.

Iain’s concert works have been performed in Australia and around the world. Highlights include the Victorian Opera production of his opera The Riders, based on the Tim Winton novel and Towards First Light, for the Centenary of ANZAC day in 2016 with text by Kate Mulvany. He was also attached to the Tim Minchin-led animated feature for Dreamworks called Larrikins , working alongside Hans Zimmer. He has collaborated with Steve Pigram, Mark Atkins and Richard Tognetti on the ACO’s multimedia presentation The Reef, as well as with the late Barry Humphries and Meow Meow for the ACO’s Weimar Cabaret. He recently composed the music for the hugely popular Australian film Runt, for which he received the WA Screen Industry Award for Best Score. He is currently composing for another feature film with is in post.