Farr was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on Leap Year Day 1968. He studied composition, orchestration and electronic music at Auckland University and was a regular player with the Auckland Philharmonia and the Karlheinz Company. Further study followed at Victoria University, Wellington, where he became known for his exciting compositions, often using the Indonesian gamelan.

He played frequently as a percussionist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra before departing New Zealand to study composition with Christopher Rouse at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York, where he graduated Master of Music.

In 1993, at the age of 25, Gareth became Chamber Music New Zealand’s youngest composer-in-residence. Since then, his works have been commissioned and performed by the NZSO, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Wellington Sinfonia, the New Zealand String Quartet, and a variety of other professional musicians in New Zealand and overseas.

His list of forthcoming commissions attests to the fact that he is now recognised as one of New Zealand’s most important composers.

He has been on a roll ever since he had four newly-commissioned works performed during the 1994 NZ International Festival of the Arts: Lilith’s Dream of Ecstasy, solo pieces for Michael Houstoun (piano) and Alexa Still (principal flute, NZSO) respectively, and a ballet for Douglas Wright and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Smashing Sweet Vixen, the percussion score of which was performed by Strike and received to great acclaim.

From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs, a commission from the NZSO to commemorate the orchestra’s 50th anniversary, was premiered at a Gala Concert in March 1997. (Part I of this work was premiered under the baton of Sir Neville Marriner with the NZSO in 1996).

More recently, his works have been performed by the New Zealand String Quartet, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Penn's Woods Festival Orchestra (Pennsylvania). He was commissioned to write a work to celebrate the opening of Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand, and the resulting work, combining symphony orchestra with soprano, tenor and karanga (native New Zealand Maori chant) was hailed as “music with a powerful and moving impact that transcends idiom and individual taste”.

In addition to his music for the concert chamber, Gareth has written music for television, most recently for Duggan, a detective series set in New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds.

Gareth Farr has an alter ego, Lilith Lacroix, who was a cast member of the "Life's a Drag" female impersonation show at Club Marcella, Rochester, New York from 1994-96, was Miss Sweetheart 1995, 1st runner up Miss Gay Upstate New York 1995 and 2nd runner up Miss Gay Rochester 1995. She has performed at various venues in New Zealand, including Downstage Theatre, the Staircase nightclub, the HERO party, the Dans Palais and the Boatshed (as part of the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts) and has appeared in the Hero, Devotion and San Francisco Gay Pride parades. She has performed her solo show DRUMDRAG to sold-out houses, won a fashion award at the Trentham Races wearing her own high-fashion handiwork, appeared in television commercials, and was recently seen recording a pop video for the theme song from Drumdrag.

Farr’s music is heavily influenced by his extensive study of percussion, both Western and non-Western. Rhythmic elements of his compositions can be linked to the complex and exciting rhythms of Rarotongan log drum ensembles, Balinese gamelan and other percussion music of the Pacific Rim. Harmonically, his musical style wavers between a neo-romantic tonal language and a non-mathematical atonality, often employing techniques such as parallelism, octotonic scales and modes borrowed from Indonesian and Indian musical systems.

Three full-length CDs (orchestral music, chamber music and string quartets) and a CD single of his music have been released to date on the Trust Records label.