Q. What is the SSO?
A. Australia’s full time orchestra based in Sydney we live in the Opera House, its our residence place and where we do most of our concerts. There are 100 permanent musicians and additional of 40/50 causal players and 40 administrative staff.

Q. How important is the SSO to the community?
A. Culturally it is very important because it is one of the performing ensembles that live in the iconic cultural centre of Australia . We have a big responsibility to the community beyond Sydney we travel through NSW. Our brass players have just this weekend been in Wogan Valley. We do activities for all ages, for school kids/adults/public concerts/ concerts in pop, game, film. We have quite a big presence and provide entertainment/education to the people of Sydney and NSW.

Q. Personally what do you think leadership is and how important is it?
A. Every group, the way people work, they usually need someone to lead them otherwise it becomes a shemozzle or too many strong willed people fighting each other. Leadership is essential, the key qualities are leading by example, not expecting people to do things you wouldn’t do. To be responsible and to be receptive to other people’s ideas, be prepared to talk and also do the hard calls when standards are not good enough.

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Q.What sort of leaders are there in the SSO
A.In the SSO we have the managing director who leads the entire company. We have a board of directors with a chairman who steers the financial planning of the company. In the orchestra itself we have a concertmaster, Dean Olding who is the leader of the orchestra. Each section of the orchestra has a leader, what we call the principal instrument player. Each department within the Orchestra e.g. Education, Production, Library, Accounting, Box Office each has its own leadership. And then the orchestra is run by an executive team which is the leaders of each of the sections within the administration.

Q.What led you to become the head of education in the SSO
A. I was a school teacher for 20 years, and Richard Gill who is the artistic director of the education program suggested for I apply for the job when it came up. I was interested in the notion of not just having my classroom at Sydney Grammar School as my only classroom, but NSW became my classroom, then Australia became my classroom as we do things around the country and now in the last two years I’ve been teaching in Korea and China for the SSO as part of our international program. So because i am a teacher and i like music.

Q. What sort of roles do you have?
A. My role in the orchestra is to manage every facet of the Education program. We have a developing artist person who oversees the Symphonia which is our mentoring orchestra. The fellowship program which is a full time chamber music program training pre-professional players. Advanced tertiary students audition and work with the orchestra sometimes as casuals and in the symphonium which delivers all our schools education programs in the regional touring. I work with him to run that program, I work with the education coordinator to convene the production of materials that support our school concerts, we program the schools concerts we run about 7 weeks of school concerts each year. We have the Meet the Music series the Discovery series we have about 25 teachers training days. All these things I have to oversee. I also have a box office member of staff who deals with all the schools and the thousands of school tickets that get sold.

Q. How do you think your role embodies the qualities and ideas of leadership?
A.  Well I'm very good at negotiating, i have a team of very creative people that have to work within  a larger organization and its my job to make sure education is fairly represented at varying levels of the company. To make sure education understands the whole direction of the company. to make sure that our programs are what they claim to be, that they are world class, unique in Australia, that they are quality, that they are 2nd to nothing else happening in Australia. That’s my job to quality assurance and also to keep thinking of new ways of reinventing the education program, checking on the professional development of my staff and a general working conditions, keeping an eye on everyone. Being a conjugate i guess between the education, the board and managing director.

Q.How important is your role to the wider community?
A. My role to the wider community, its an interesting question as i don’t think anybody in a company as large as ours in a program that is as big as ours the SSO’s overall activities,  ⅓ or those activities are education , in that context it is a very important role. However education cannot work on its own, we have to have the muscians of the orchestra and the libarians and the box office people. In terms of my role in the community it is important for me to do my role properly so that the schools can rely on us to enrich their programs and give their children good quality concert experiences. And to provide materials that can teach before they come to the concerts. And to think of all the regional concerts and the relationships we have there and to give their students oppurtunities whenever we are travelling through those towns. So my role is important but maybe more so for the schooling and local musical community, i think granny on the farm on Wagga would be excited to hear the SSO is coming to Wagga but my role as part of that has little consequence on her, unless she has a grandchild.

What do you think must be done for SSO to continue to promote music in the community?

We need keep touring, keep a physical presence, playing at the domain , parramatta park, playing music for all age groups, keeping an internet presence, we need to be providing things that the community want. We have the responsibility of training up the next generation of conductors, composers and performers. we need to enhance music programs in this country by the quality of the material that we can do that they can’t do in the classroom. You can’t in the classroom and listen to a piece of music by Beethoven and listen to the music with just the flute and clarinet, unless the whole class can play and you have an orchestra in your classroom. These are the sort of things, we can help teachers unpack and extend what they do, In terms of adult education and the sort of concerts that unpack music for everyone, thats something we also have to keep doing and find new ways to get people to connect with classical music. As you know in this country we are big sport people but we are not really big cultural people. Last week we played the music of Tandon, the guy who wrote the music for Crouching TIger Hidden Dragon, so we had a hugely different audience to the audience that would listen to a Brahms symphony. We have to keep finding ways to connect with all aspects of the community... since tax-payers fund our organization so we have a responsibility.

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Q.Do you think there is a difference between musical leadership and say educational leadership?
A.I think there is in that musical leadership in the orchestra is what we call the artistic direction, and what that job is is to select the music that the orchestra would play over the whole year, to select conductors to inspire the musicians and bring a good performance to concerts. While the education leadership is geared at a slightly different clientele  its really up to me to find ways to extend people we are training and helping teachers in schools, and the other members of the society,  the regional conservatoriums we have a lot of work when we travel with them and the Sydney Con, Universities providing pathways for people. There is a difference, its just that my job is tied to people that are interested in music, and music is the commodity that i can help the people use. Whereas musical leadership is more of leadership of the ensemble and its performing aspects.