In Conversation

In the final episode for 2022, Simon Moore speaks with a man who has been declared by the National Trust to be a National Living Treasure. Roger Woodward has dazzled audiences for over 60 years here and overseas. A champion of Australian composers, he has performed at the invitation of Sviatoslav Richter, Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Charles Dutoit… the list goes on. Performing from New York to LA...

British keyboardist and director Chad Kelly has a very long list of credits to his name. He has been living in Australia less than two years, but has already performed with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Victorian Opera, and with the Sydney and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras. Earlier this year, he joined Opera Australia. His commitment to historically informed performance practice has led hi...

Nicholas Hammond first appeared on Broadway at the age of just 11, and his career only opened up further from there, and never stopped. He’s worked all over the world on stage, film and television. He’s been in over 40 films, from Lord of the Flies to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , more than 250 TV shows, most notably the Amazing Spiderman , and he’s made an award winning documentary of the true...

An acclaimed actor, director and writer, Jonathan Biggins has entertained audiences for decades with his wit, cheekiness, and a very healthy dose of irreverence. He’s played Peter Sellers, appeared in The Mikado , and directed Australian productions of Avenue Q and Noises Off . But his most well-known work is in political satire, as one of the brains behind, and a performer in, The Wharf Revue , w...

Liesel Badorrek is a Sydney based writer, director and performer with a diverse and wide ranging repertoire. She’s a founder of Loose Canon Arts, which has created new work for young people throughout Asia and the Middle East, has directed with the Darlinghurst Theatre and CDP Productions, and keeps thing real as a member of the all-woman comedy cabaret collective Six Quick Chicks. Somehow, she al...

German baroque violinist Jonas Zschenderlein certainly got off to an early start. He’s been performing with professional ensembles since he was a teenager, around the same time as he began his own ensemble, 4 Times Barque. He’s played all over Europe, Asia and the Americas, from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to Carnegie Hall in New York, and he’s now performing at the City Recital Hall Angel Plac...

One of Australia’s greatest writers, David Malouf has been publishing acclaimed novels, short stories, poetry, plays and opera librettos for over 50 years. He’s the recipient of countless awards – most notably the International Dublin Literary Award for Remembering Babylon in 1996, the Australian Prime Minister’s literary award in 2008, and in 2016 the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievem...

Alexander Gadjiev is an exciting young pianist who is making waves across the world. He was the winner of the 2021 Sydney International Piano Competition, second place getter in the International Chopin Competition of the same year, including being awarded the side prize for best performance of a Chopin Sonata, and was the BBC New Generation Artist since 2019.  In this conversation, Alexander give...

Anyone witness to the Australian theatre scene over the past five decades will know and love Geraldine Turner. Her long and distinguished career, most particularly in musical theatre, includes the original Australian productions of A Little Night Music and Chicago , and she’s also appeared in productions of Company , Oliver , Anything Goes , and The Mikado, to name just a few. She’s been in evergr...

An opera singer with an impressively long and distinguished career, Cheryl Barker has sung some of the key roles in the repertoire, perhaps most famously playing Mimi in Baz Luhrmann’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème , her incredible performances of Tosca , and creating the role of Sarah Miles in Jake Heggie’s The End of the Affair , in Houston. She and her husband, baritone Peter Coleman-Wright...

To paraphrase The New York Times – the words “superstar” and “mandolinist” have not traditionally been seen together in the same sentence. However that has changed thanks to Avi Avital. He’s the first mandolin soloist to be nominated for a classical Grammy Award and is a driving force behind the reinvigoration of the mandolin repertoire. Over 100 compositions have been written especially for him,...

A remarkable violinist who has had an extraordinary career across three continents, Charmian Gadd started in humble beginnings on a farm on the Central Coast in the 1940s. She exploded onto the music scene as a teenager, and went on to play with such luminaries as Yehudi Menuhin and Neville Marriner, living in the UK and the USA before coming back to Australia in the late 80s. Her contribution to...

Naseema Sparks is an experienced company director whose passion for the arts led her to take on key leadership roles at board level in organisations such as the Sydney Biennale and the Sydney Dance Company. Now chair of Sydney Living Museums and Music in the Regions, one of our newest arts organisations, she has said “the arts is my balance, it’s good for the soul”, which is a sentiment we can all...

Lyndon Terracini has certainly left his mark on Australian opera – and he’s not done yet. He has been Artistic Director of Opera Australia since 2009, however his association with opera goes back decades, having first appeared with the company as a baritone in the 1970s. His operatic career took him to his ancestral home of Italy, though he made frequent visits back to Australia to perform here to...

For Eric Whitacre, everything seems possible. The music of this Grammy-award winning composer and conductor has been performed in all corners of the world. He has united 100,000 singers in more than 145 countries for his ground breaking Virtual Choirs, his debut album as a conductor, Light and Gold , went straight to the top of the charts, and he’s even collaborated with NASA – his composition Dee...

One of Australia’s most celebrated violinists, Brendan Joyce is the artistic director of Camerata, Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra. His leadership has been described by critics as both dynamic and indefatigable, which is why it’s unsurprising he often appears around Australia with such organisations as the Orchestra of the Antipodes, Van Diemen's Band, and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. In t...

A violinist who has performed on every continent, Adelaide-born Daniel Dodds is the Artistic Director of Festival Strings Lucerne. He’ll be back in Australia  to appear as Concertmaster of the Australian World Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta, for performances in Melbourne and Sydney. It is said he elicits “joie de vivre” from fellow musicians and audiences alike, which is apparent in the...

Australian soprano Amy Manford has already played Christine Daaé in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera on the West End and in Athens, and is about to appear in the upcoming production at the Sydney Opera House and the Arts Centre in Melbourne. She also co-runs MM Creative Productions, which produced Disney in Concert A Dream is a Wish , in Perth last year in which she also appeared. A...

The musical theatre scene in Australia and around the world owes a great deal to Guy Simpson. He has been supervising productions of The Phantom of the Opera for over 30 years around the world, from South Africa to New Zealand, Brazil to the Philippines. He has a similarly long association with productions of Miss Saigon , and has been instrumental in countless others – from the larger scale, like...

This week, In Conversation is on tour, coming to you from the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, in Townsville. The Festival’s new Artistic Director is British/German Violinist Jack Liebeck. His music ranges from the intricacy of Mozart through to the passion of contemporary Australian works by Brett Dean. He’s on a whopping 17 albums, including playing on the film scores of Jane Eyre and Anna...

An actor whose career on the stage, film and television is approaching half a century and still going strong, Simon Burke burst onto the scene in the highly acclaimed Devil’s Playground at the age of 13. He won the AFI Award for Best Actor for that performance – still to this day the youngest person to receive that honour. His career since has included appearances on television which are embedded...

Hayden Tee is not just a triple threat, he’s more of a quadruple one – an actor, singer, make-up artist, and also now a director. He knows a thing or two about musical theatre, having played Javert in Les Misérables in multiple countries, including on the West End, Broadway and on these shores. He’s appeared in Matilda , South Pacific , My Fair Lady , and Into the Woods , to name just a few, his c...

One of Australia’s most beloved and renowned pianists, Simon Tedeschi has played with all the major Australian orchestras, and is a seasoned chamber musician and collaborator too. He’s recorded a vast swath of albums covering music from JS Bach and Domenico Scarlatti to Mark Isaacs and Mike Nock, with a decent chunk of George Gershwin too. He’s also a writer, with his first book,  Fugitive , publi...

Australia’s foremost Indigenous classical composer and performer, William Barton has performed internationally with the London and Berlin Philharmonia Orchestras, and in this country with all the premier orchestras. From Kalkadunga heritage, he has vastly expanded the horizons of the didgeridoo with his prodigious musicality. Simon Moore speaks to William as part of NAIDOC Week 2022. William share...

American soprano Leah Crocetto continues to astonish audiences with her moving portrayals of opera’s greatest heroines. She has performed across America, in such seminal operas as Turandot, Otello and Norma, in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Centre to the Metropolitan Opera. She’s also sung the title role of Aida with Opera Australia, and is about to appear as Leonora in Il Trovatore. L...