Nicole Forsyth

Answer I am a freelance violist, academic and teacher these days. I really enjoy freelance life in Sydney playing for Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia and a variety of historically informed performance and new music ensembles, which have included 15 years as Principal viola of Pinchgut Opera's Orchestra of the Antipodes, and managing and playing viola in chamber company Ironwood. <br> <br> Post my PhD studies with Sydney Living Museums, on the music collection of Rouse Hill House, I'm also doing my own research led music-social history-contextual projects, which include next year focuses on the music of the WW2 Dunera Boys story, with Canberra International Music Festival and Orange Regional Museum. I'm a sessional lecturer for Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Historical Performance and Strings, where I love teaching principal study as well as in the Orchestral Studies program, introducing modern string undergraduates to historic string instruments in Early Music Ensemble. <br> <br> I also tutor the violas in the weekly orchestras for NSW Public Schools The Arts Unit, and was Lead String Educator 2017-2020 for the ACO at St Marys North Public School, which is research led teaching (Dr Anita Collins) of children 5 years to 8 years developing resilience, and literacy skills in both language and music. And I love skiing, bushwalking, swimming & surfing - or just being outside when I'm not 'viola-ing'.

Answer It is the people I met and worked with during AYO programs that were the highlight. Not only the conductors, directors and tutors of programs, but my student peers in AYO's programs. AYO allowed us to make friends and professional connections across Australia, and eventually across the world.

Answer I think we all took away the collective experience of striving for excellence, together, as a major philosophy of life. There was a willingness in AYO programs, from both students and staff, to go the extra mile (or hour), to create something incredibly special in music.

Answer Inspiring, from the perspective of a staff member. Exactly the same willingness to go the extra mile, and the same capacity for incredibly hard work from these current generations of AYO-ers, Young Symphonists and Chamber Players. I loved being a tutor for Young Symphonists and Chamber Players programs at different times; age groups at both ends of AYO's current suite of programs, but with the same 'sparkle' and capacity for immense challenge and learning and performance. Inspiring to teach.

Answer So many! My first season with AYO at Easter 1990 was recording the dance score from Vast which was by Australian composer Barry Conyngham, and was originally choreographed on the Sydney Dance Company by Graeme Murphy. That had a big influence. The Australian works we played in AYO very much influenced my career in terms of seeking out places and companies, later, that commissioned new work by living composers. I particularly remember playing Carl Vine's Concerto Grosso on the 1992 Indonesian tour with Camerata of AYO, and Graham Abbot rehearsing and explaining the compositional process so beautifully to us. <br> <br> I also remember rehearsing and performing the tricky Richard Meale work for double string orchestra <i>Homage to Garcia Lorca </i> (and it going wrong!) during the initial Summer Academy at Melbourne University – a super intensive month of chamber orchestra and chamber music for the older players in AYO in Dec-Jan 1994. I had the very precious experience of being the violist in the New Music Ensemble at National Music Camp 1991, where we played Xenakis, Terry Riley, and Reich, as well as workshopping more new Australian work by young composers within the ensemble, including Vanessa Tomlinson, and Tom Meadowcroft. Eye opening, and challenging, and something I wanted more of. <br> <br> In my time in the AYO programs, chamber music hadn't yet become a separate program, so we squeezed it around everything else... I seem to remember a lot of nearly all nighter's during AYO seasons, Summer Academy and Camerata of AYO rehearsals, with much red wine and laughter, discovering string quartets, sextets and octets by Brahms, Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Shostakovich. Good memories and amazing experiences!

Answer AYO's programs provide a unique and vital connection across Australia for the next generations of musicians, and artists. Not just those who will take their places in professional orchestras here and around the world, but the future government and industry arts policy leaders, festival directors, composers, artistic directors of all types of arts companies, writers, technicians, sound artists, managers, academics and teachers. It provides a peak experience in performance and program excellence at a national level.

Answer Excellence, inspiring, vital.

Answer I learnt how not to get lost in a whole bunch of cities across the world... And I learnt how to find the best pubs, karaoke bars, and places to eat, as well as all the gigs and local music scenes in each country. I’m still telling all my own students to audition for AYO's programs when they are old enough (and not telling them the mischief that my AYO friends and I got up to on tour...!)

Answer I would love to learn marimba. Or taiko. I've always loved the sound of Australian compositions for marimba and have had a few taiko lessons through the school programs I've worked in – I really admire TaikOz. Or in my Historically Informed Performance life, I'd probably (try and fail) to learn theorbo and lute – the bass line and continuo possibilities. Bass line and continuo are the directors of all orchestral music baroque and before, it’s a much more interesting place to be in the orchestra. But my 'voice' is definitely the viola – it’s the perfect foil between 19th, 20th and 21st century melody, as well as 17th and 18th century high bass line in orchestral music. I can't imagine not playing it.

Answer A tuba!