Barbara has been a professional composer since the mid 90’s, when she was signed as a writer/producer to Sony/ATV after several of her songs were cut by artists in New Zealand (Annie Crummer) and Australia (Jon Stevens). She later co-wrote for artists Delta Goodrem, Christine Anu, Joe Cocker, and Sally Singleton.
It only took one decent sync cut to recoup Barbara’s publishing deal. It was a 60 second ad, written to brief on a 3 hour deadline. ‘The opportunity had come directly to Sony/ATV from a US advertising agency based in Maine, in the period between Christmas and New Year, when almost nobody was working, yet Janet from Sony who handled the syncs was in the office, as was I’, says Barbara. ‘I wrote them a song specially to the brief and got the placement! Stems were delivered the following day!’
Another sync came from Sony/ATV actively pitching Barb’s songs to Hollywood, and landing a spot for one of them in a Hugh Jackman movie.
After the US ad recouped her deal, Sony/ATV was back with another offer too good to refuse, and Barbara signed for a second term, again recouping everything by 2012.
This time it was thanks to yet more syncs; some kids TV theme and feature song placements, (Canada’s CJ the DJ, Channel 7’s Toybox, Nine Network’s ‘New Macdonald’s Farm’, and various TV station promo campaigns) co-composing a feature film with Jon Stevens (Open Cut, with Matt Day and Alex Dimitriadis, which made finalist for Best Music in a Telemovie) and scoring some music to picture for a suite of videos used on board the planes for Qantas (which won her an AGSC/APRA Best Composer of a Corporate Video award. Through her win, the following year Barbara became a voting judge for the AGSC.
Barbara was also a finalist for Engineer of the Year in NZ at the NZ Music Awards – the only female finalist in this category for about 2 decades.
In 2025, Barbara signed a third contract with Sony Music Publishing to administer her back catalogue, but that allows her freedom to write for multiple other publishers and pre-cleared music libraries directly, exclusively or non-exclusively, as is becoming more common for composers do these days in the ever-changing world of film and TV music sync.
Here are a few of Barbara’s cowrites (during her Sony/ATV time). Coming soon: audio snippets of current tracks.
Official Torch Relay Song for the Olympic Games in Australia