Speaker Biographies

Tony Cane

A former ABC news correspondent in south-east Asia and India, Tony Cane worked for eight years in London engaging ABC concert artists and helping set up the Sydney Symphony’s 1974 tour of Europe. Joining the ABC Music Department following his return to Australia in 1976, he became a writer and broadcaster about music. He was among the Sydney Symphony’s first pre-concert speakers and is still heard occasionally on ABC Classic FM.

Nicholas Carter

Nicholas Carter is our Assistant Conductor. You can read his full biography here.

Dr Robert Curry

Robert Curry received his musical training at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music; the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music, Warsaw; and at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he studied for four years under the American pianist-scholar, Charles Rosen.

Before returning to Sydney in December 2006 to take up the position of Principal of the Con High, he had been Head of Classical Music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. In addition to his Conservatorium position he is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney. He is editor of the forthcoming Festschrift for Charles Rosen on his Eightieth Birthday.

Peter Czornyj

Peter Czornyj was born in Staffordshire, England, and studied musicology, conducting and composition at Hull University (England) and Music Research at Hamburg University (Germany). He is the author of a doctoral dissertation on Telemann and Berlin.

From 1992 to 1998 he was Director of the preeminent label for early music, Archiv Produktion, at Deutsche Grammophon. Following that, he was founding managing director of a small production company and the label Glissando, also based in Hamburg. In 2001 he was named Artistic Administrator of the Cleveland Orchestra, where he worked with conductors Christoph von Dohnányi, Franz Welser-Möst and Pierre Boulez.

In Cleveland he was involved in major opera-in-concert performances, including Siegfried, Don Carlos, Elektra, Hänsel und Gretel, Le Rossignol and Act II of Wagner’s Parsifal, the latter performed  in Cleveland and at New York’s Carnegie Hall, conducted by Pierre Boulez. In addition, he was instrumental in managing a wide commissioning and co-commissioning program, which included many new works from composers such as Julian Anderson, George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Chen-Yi,  Marc-Andre Dalbavie, Georg Friedrich Haas, Hanspeter Kyburz, Matthias Pintscher, Kaija Saariaho, Johannes Maria Staud, Rolf Wallin and others. In 2006 he was appointed Vice President for Artistic Administration at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, where he worked closely with Music Director David Robertson.

In August 2008 Peter Czornyj joined the team of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as Director of Artistic Planning.

Scott Davie

Scott Davie has given concerts throughout Australia and overseas, and his recordings are regularly broadcast on ABC radio. Since 2005, Scott has collaborated closely with Graeme Murphy and the Sydney Dance Company, and their production of Grand has been acclaimed throughout Australia, the United States and in China. His academic research has led to performance-lectures in Europe, and his focus on Russian music has resulted in a Russian music history course at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Yvonne Frindle

Yvonne Frindle is the Sydney Symphony’s Publications Editor and Music Presentation Manager. Born in Sydney, she began working in orchestral administration in 1996, first with Symphony Australia, then as Artistic Administrator of the WASO. From 2002 to 2005 she was Artistic Administrator of Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland, where she also presented talks for the Cleveland Orchestra. Known to Australian audiences as a writer and speaker, she also admits to playing the flute.

Listen to a preview of Yvonne Frindle's pre-concert talk for the 2008 concert, Stravinsky's Petrushka: Pianos and Puppets (duration 13').

Follow Yvonne on twitter @sso_notes.

David Garrett

As a speaker and writer about music, David Garrett has contributed to the presentations of most of Australia’s major music organisations, notably in program notes and pre-concert talks. After a career in music which has included managing Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and programming for the Australian network of symphony orchestras, he is now engaged in research towards the history of the ABC as a music organisation. This year David Garrett is once more giving the talks for all the concerts in the Mozart in the City series, as well as for other concerts in the season. Listen to David Garrett in his audio feature The Dream of Gerontius - A Catechism. (Duration: 24')

Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson plays Principal Horn in the Sydney Symphony. Read his full biography here.

Gordon Kerry

Gordon Kerry is the composer of a number of works premiered by the Sydney Symphony under conductors such as Mark Elder and Markus Stenz, including a Clarinet Concerto for Francesco Celata. He is also a regular pre-concert speaker for the orchestra. He writes extensively on music – including annotations for concert programs – and is the author of New Classical Music: Composing Australia, recently published by UNSW Press.
www.gordonkerry.com

Genevieve Lang

Since 1998 Genevieve Lang has performed regularly as section and guest principal harpist with the Sydney Symphony. She has also enjoyed a long association with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, both as Guest Principal Harp and as a regular pre-concert speaker. She is a founding member of SHE (Seven Harp Ensemble), a group directed by harpist Alice Giles, which is active in commissioning and performing new Australian music. She has appeared as soloist with the Tasmanian, West Australian and New Zealand symphony orchestras. In 2008 Genevieve Lang undertook the Symphony Australia Traineeship in Artistic Administration, which provided opportunities to work with a number of Australian orchestras, including the Sydney Symphony, and with ABC Radio.

Listen to Genevieve Lang in Edward Elgar - Man or Symbol?, adapted from talks and an ABC Classic FM interval feature for the 2008 Elgar Festival. (Duration: 21')

Robert Murray

Robert Murray is an arts marketer and freelance writer. His monthly CD review column appears in the Australian Financial Review Magazine and he is a guest reviewer on ABC Radio National’s Music Show. He has also written program notes for Symphony Australia, the Sydney Symphony, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and ABC Classics.

Kim Waldock

Kim Waldock is the Education Manager of the Sydney Symphony. A graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium and the University of New South Wales, she has spent the past 20 years teaching in schools and devising curriculum material for NSW school syllabi. She is a regular speaker at professional conferences for music teachers, and often runs musical analysis workshops for senior school students around NSW. She has published many teaching resources through the Australian Music Centre and written educational material for the Sydney Symphony, Musica Viva and other leading arts organisations.

Gordon Kalton Williams

Gordon Kalton Williams is a writer, editor and speaker. As librettist, he collaborated with composer Andrew Schultz on the cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend, based on the novel by T.G.H. Strehlow. He has written narrations for Beethoven’s Egmont music (Sydney Symphony, 1993) and Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat (Queensland Symphony Orchestra, 1996).

He was project co-ordinator for Music is our Culture (by Kiwat, Rotumah, McKenzie, Warusam and Chester Schultz), the first work for symphony orchestra by indigenous Australians, and he produced the Orchestra Dreaming concert in which that work was premiered at the 1998 Adelaide Festival. He has been the co-producer and co-presenter of ABC Classic FM specials on indigenous music in the concert hall and in 1999 wrote and presented the radio feature The US of Opera, a survey of modern American so-called ‘CNN’ opera. He was an actor and writer with Darwin Theatre Group (1987–88), producing the group-derived play Dust-Off Vietnam, Writer/Director-in-Residence for the NT Arts Council in Tennant Creek (1987), and in 1981 instigated the position of Composer in the Community in Alice Springs.

Gordon Williams graduated from the NIDA Playwrights Studio in 1988 and the Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne in 1978. He was editor of publications for Symphony Australia (1999–2005), and his program notes appear regularly in Sydney Symphony programs.

Raff Wilson

With a background in music publishing, Raff Wilson has been Artistic Manager of the Sydney Symphony since 2005. He studied languages at Sydney University and his musical training was as a tenor; he remains an active participant in choirs around Sydney. In addition to his role in the artistic planning of the orchestra’s season, Raff has produced several CDs for SSO Live, including an ARIA-nominated disc of music by Brett Dean.