National Music Camp

Violinist Monica Curro has been Assistant Principal 2nd Violin of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 1998, and was previously a core member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She has played with the Australian World Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and Guest Concertmaster of West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Auckland Chamber Orchestra. In 2009, Monica was invited as the only Australian to play in the World Orchestra for Peace, and has since joined them regularly for concerts around the world. Monica has appeared as soloist with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and in 2012 gave the world premiere of Stefan Cassomenos’ Double Violin Concerto, with her sister Sarah. Monica was a member of the Board of Directors of the Australian Youth Orchestra for 9 years. She has tutored regularly for AYO, and has taught at various tertiary institutions. In 2016, Monica was the Director of the AYO’s Smalley Chamber Orchestra. Also in that year, she directed MSO’s outreach program in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Monica is currently joint Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, together with pianist and composer Stefan Cassomenos. Monica was Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Women in Music Festival 2019-20, and since 2022 has curated the “Music at McClelland” series at McClelland Sculpture Park & Gallery. Monica is sought after as a public speaker, giving regular pre-concert talks and conversations for major concert presenters, as well as keynote addresses at universities and educational organizations. Monica is a founding member of acclaimed ensemble PLEXUS, which since launching in 2014 has commissioned and premiered more than 110 new works.

Iain Grandage is a composer, conductor and Festival Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival. He has received the prestigious Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, the Ian Potter Emerging Composer Fellowship, and been Composer-in-Residence with the WA Symphony Orchestra, and Musician-in-Residence at the UWA School of Music, where he is currently an Honorary Research Fellow, and by whom he was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate.

In 1996 and 1998, Iain was musical director and arranger for the national tours of Jimmy Chi’s multi award winning Corrugation Road, and his involvement with indigenous musicians has continued through his collaborations with the Spinifex people of central Australia, initially on the theatre work Career Highlights of the Mamu, and subsequently with concert works in collaboration with WASO and Topology. Iain has worked as musical supervisor and arranger on many large scale multi artform events – from the Black Arm Band’s award-winning performances Hidden Republic, dirtsong and Seven Songs, to the opening event ‘Home’ for the 2016 Festival of Perth, directed by Nigel Jamieson and featuring Richard Walley, John Butler, Tim Minchin and The Waifs. He has co-created welcoming events for the 2007 Festival of Perth and 2010 Sydney Festival, collaborated with Steve Pigram, Mark Atkins and Richard Tognetti on the ACO’s multimedia presentation The Reef. His Artistic directorship of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival has been hailed for its innovation and energy, and he curated the Chamber Music Program for the 2018 Adelaide Festival to great critical and audience acclaim.

Iain’s concert works have been performed by the ACO, Brodsky String Quartet, Australian String Quartet, Australian Brass Quintet, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Sara Macliver, Craig Ogden and choirs and orchestras around Australia. Highlights include the Victorian Opera production of his opera The Riders, based on the Tim Winton novel with libretto by Alison Croggon, which had Michael Shmith writing in The Age “…an opera of rare dramatic power, utmost musicality and first-rate performances. “, Peter Burch in The Australian writing “.. a bewitching jewel of contemporary music theatre.” .and Peter Rose in the Australian Book Review writing “star of the night was Grandage’s radiant new score”. For the Centenary of ANZAC day in 2016, Iain conducted the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in the critically and publically acclaimed world premiere performance of his oratorio Towards First Light, with text by Kate Mulvany after the words of Australian Servicemen and women. Gordon Forrester in Limelight wrote “Grandage shows us intimacy, vulnerability, inspiration, comfort and desolation in this exceptional piece, “ and Graeme Strahle in The Australian wrote “this was a memorable world premiere of a major new Australian work. Grandage conducted a polished Adelaide Symphony Orchestra with tremendous flair and energy.”

As music director, he has won Helpmann Awards for his work with Meow Meow on the Malthouse/Sydney Festival production Little Match Girl, and with the cast on Sydney Theatre Company’s The Secret River. He won Green Room Awards for his work with ANAM and Meow on Wunderschön, and with Meow and Malthouse on Vamp. He has conducted orchestras for the late Dr G Yunupingu, Kate Miller-Heidke, Katie Noonan and Tim Minchin, and led the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Southbank for Meow Meow’s Pandemonium. He led a revival of Shane Warne The Musical for the 2013 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and was music director and arranger for Opera Australia’s critically lauded new opera The Rabbits by Kate Miller-Heidke and Lally Katz. He regularly conducts and presents the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Education program.

His compositions for the theatre include Helpmann Award winning scores for Cloudstreet, The Secret River, When Time Stops and (in collaboration with Kate Miller-Heidke) The Rabbits, and Green Room Award winning scores for The Riders, Lawn, In the Next Room, Babes in the Wood, The Odyssey and The Blue Room for theatre companies including Belvoir, Black Swan, Malthouse, MTC and STC. His score for the Garin Nugroho silent film Satan Jawa, co-written with Rahayu Suppangah for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and gamelan musicians, received a Helpmann award for best score, as well as rave reviews from critics. It regularly tours internationally – most recently to Holland Festival and Singapore.

Trombone

AYO: 1967, 1968 and 1969 Seasons

Gordon Sellar was a trombonist with the AYO from 1967 to 1969. Over his career, he played in military bands for 47 years and was with the RAAF Central Band for 19 of those years. Gordon has very fond memories of his time at AYO and admires how AYO has given access to young people in regional areas and has influenced the musicians that have shaped Australia.

Tell us your best AYO memory?

The first AYO was Melbourne 1967. The conductor was the Dutch conductor Wilem van Otterloo, principal conductor of residency orchestra at The Hague. The main work was Beethoven’s 5^th symphony. Us trombones do not play until the last movement so we have a long wait. He was not happy about the first few notes and made the strings repeat them over and over again. They were playing triplets instead of a quaver rest followed by three quavers. He was quite annoyed but eventually moved on. He was highly respected as a Beethoven interpreter so I was very stressed coming in on a high C. Many of our parents had served or lived through WW2. I think I have a possible explanation if my memory is not playing tricks with me. In a radio programme connected with WW2 possibly in the 1950s those first four notes were used as a secret call sign or code using triplets and not quavers. Those string players had possibly had that triplet seared into their brains from birth.

Cello

AYO: 1967, 1969
AYO National Music Camp: 1967, 1969

Professor Boyd Strauss attended Music Camp in the late sixties/early seventies and played cello in the AYO in 1967 and 1969.

He went on to study medicine, graduating in 1973 from Monash University. After training as a specialist in internal medicine, he took a PhD, and has since gone on to a career as a clinician-scientist, working between academia and hospital medicine. He is now an adjunct Professor of Medicine at Monash University.

He has split his clinical interests between acute medicine, clinical nutrition and metabolism, whilst his research interest lies in the measurement of human body composition in health and disease.

Boyd still plays the cello, and played string quartet and piano trio for many years in a private capacity.

He thinks the AYO and Music Camp orchestral experiences, plus the subsequent chamber music making, helped him develop the team-working skills necessary to lead a teaching hospital clinical unit, and a research group.

‘The lifelong lessons of listening to others, discussing methods and outcomes, and giving respect to other team members all began for me at Music Camp.’

In 2013, Elizabeth was the Music Director of Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp, where she programmed a series of eight fantastic summer concerts. At the time, she gave an interview to AYO:

Alumni interview

A graduate of the University of Adelaide and winner of the prestigious ABC Instrumental Competition, violinist Michele Walsh undertook further studies in London with distinguished violinist Szymon Goldberg.

Michele has appeared as soloist with major orchestras in Australia and has performed in the UK, the United States, Canada, Europe and South-East Asia. Formerly Associate Concertmaster of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, a position she held for over a decade, she is currently Associate Professor in Violin and Head of Strings at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. Under her leadership the string faculty has attracted students from all over Australia. As well, she is a founding member of the Griffith Trio, which has made several successful international tours, and is a frequent guest at chamber music festivals around the country.

Michele has a particular interest in fostering young musicians and working in regional areas. She is very committed to the work of the Australian Youth Orchestra, having served as a board member and chair of the Artistic Committee for many years. She continues close association with the AYO through membership of the Artistic Committee and Council and regular involvement in their programs.

Michele was Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music Winterschool for many years and is regular guest director of the Mount Buller Summer Chamber Music School. She has recently been appointed as a Director on the Board of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Michele is in demand as a guest teacher and frequently serves on competition juries in Australia and South-East Asia. Many of her former students are major competition prize winners and hold positions in Australia, USA, Europe and Asia.

Combining period and modern performance, violist Katie Yap’s love of music was fostered in the school music programs of her hometown Brisbane.

She is fascinated by music’s ability to tell stories and bring people together, and explores this in her own projects, as well as bringing this connecting quality to all her ensemble work.

She is the 2022 Freedman Fellow, and one of the 2023 Musica Viva Australia FutureMakers. Her focus in both explores a life-long fascination with improvisation, and her love of the natural world. She is very deeply a viola player – so rather than taking a solo approach with her projects, she loves to collaborate and connect through group improvisation and co-composition. Her Freedman Fellowship project Multitudes involves the co-creation of four new pieces with collaborators Emily Sheppard, Donald Nicolson, Mindy Meng Wang, and Bowerbird Collective, all based on bird poems by Judith Wright.

She has been the Artistic Director of Music, She Wrote (3MBS’s festival celebrating women in music) since its inception in 2021, and she believes deeply that representation in programming never means sacrificing quality – just a more curious mind in the hunt for works.

Her greatest love in performing is chamber music, and she is a founding member of prog-baroque quartet Croissants & Whiskey, the Chrysalis Harp Trio, and artistic director of crossover folk/baroque group Wattleseed Ensemble.

She plays regularly with Australia’s finest ensembles including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Van Diemen’s Band, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and has joined groups like the Academy of Ancient Music overseas.

She is also a passionate educator, having taught viola at the University of Queensland and Monash University, and she has an intractable habit of stress-baking, which can make for delicious rehearsal breaks!