Timpani

Richard Miller: Principal Timpani

Richard Miller was born in Melbourne in 1948, into a musical and theatrical family. His first instrument was the violin, and the drum kit followed soon after. He moved to Sydney with his family when they decided to open the Music Hall at Neutral Bay. Although rock and jazz were the abiding passions of his youth, he decided to begin percussion and timpani studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s timpanist Alard Maling. He then joined the ABC’s newly formed National Training Orchestra, and subsequently began playing with the SSO.

Richard Miller studied in the United States for five years, in Los Angeles with Forest Clark and Mitchell Peters of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and in New York with Fred Hinger, timpanist with the Philadelphia Orchestra for many years and later timpanist with the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera. He then spent two years in Britain and Europe, pursuing his jazz and rock career, before returning to Australia to take up a position as percussionist with the SSO. He was also involved with the Sydney-based Synergy percussion ensemble, a partnership which brought him in close contact with Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, Nigel Westlake and many of Australia’s leading composers.

Since becoming the SSO’s principal timpanist in 1986, Richard Miller has performed with almost all the major performance ensembles in Sydney and has also taught at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Mark Robinson: Assistant Principal Timpani / Tutti Percussion

Born in Sydney, Mark Robinson obtained his Bachelor’s degree with Honours from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2001, studying with Daryl Pratt and Richard Miller. He gained his Postgraduate Diploma in Percussion from the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2005, and was awarded a Junior Fellowship in 2006. His teachers in London included Neil Percy, David Searcy, Kurt-Hans Goedicke and Andrew Barclay. He was awarded the James Blades Award for Percussion (2004) and the Zildjian prize (2005).

While in the United Kingdom, he worked with some of the UK’s finest orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Bournemouth, London, and City of Birmingham symphony orchestras. He toured Europe with the LSO and performed under the direction of conductors including Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, André Previn, Yuri Temirkanov, Richard Hickox and Yan-Pascal Tortelier.

In 2005, he recorded the obbligato timpani part in Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne for BBC Radio 3. He has been a regular participant at the Aldeburgh and St Endellion Festivals, and performed Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and Luciano Berio’s Linea during the 2004 London Berio festival, Omaggio. He also performed alongside Bob Becker (Nexus Percussion) and Colin Currie.

He moved to Belfast in 2006 and was appointed Principal Percussion with the Ulster Orchestra. In 2007 he was featured in a 6-part BBC television series, Derek’s Dreams, in which he coached a cattle farmer from County Fermanagh to play percussion for an Ulster Orchestra concert. He has been heavily involved in education programs in Sydney, London and throughout Northern Ireland.

Mark Robinson returned to Australia to join the SSO in 2010.