Cover Photo © Jessica Bader Photography

As we celebrate 50 years of WAYO in 2024, we chatted to some of our Alumni to catch up on what they’ve been up to, and their memories from their WA Youth Orchestras experience.

Can you tell us a bit about your career since WAYO?

After WAYO and uni I became a fairly regular casual in WASO and a member of the Decibel new music ensemble, as well as doing a lot of freelance work, first as a player and then as a conductor. It wasn’t really until I moved to Melbourne though to take up a job at Monash that my career really took off.

I became the first Indigenous Australian to conduct one of the state symphony orchestras in concert with the MSO, and have since gone on to work with the ASO, SSO and WASO. I’ve conducted the premieres of a number of operas, including Cat Hope’s Speechless in the 2019 Perth Festival (for which I received a Helpmann Award nomination), Gina Williams’ and Guy Ghouse’s Noongar operas Koolbardi Wer Wardong and Wundig Wer Wilura with the WA Opera, and the live premiere of Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s second opera Parrwang Lifts the Sky with Short Black Opera and Victorian Opera. During the pandemic I was asked to write a short two minute piece for Decibel, and to apply for the Ngarra-Burria First Peoples Composers program which has launched me into a whole lot of composition work. My piece The Coming Dawn kicked off WASO’s 2024 season, and I’ve just finished writing the piano vocal score for my first opera scene.

And years after watching Richard Gill on Spicks and Specks and thinking “huh, classical people can be on this” I somehow managed to follow in his footsteps. So I’ve probably peaked at this stage.

Aaron backstage with WAYO musicians at WA Opera’s Koolbardi Wer Wardong in 2021

How or why did you choose your instrument to start with?

I originally wanted to play piano, but my parents thought I would be too small to reach the keys properly and decided I should play violin instead (since they came in small sizes). So I did that for a long time until I was trying to put together a string quartet with a bunch of friends. We couldn’t find a viola player who was free when we were, so I’d contemplated taking it up as a second instrument but hadn’t really gotten around to doing anything about it. Then when auditioning for WAYO one year, Lawrie Jacks was on the panel and asked if I’d ever thought about learning the viola. (If that question had come from a non-viola player it probably would have been devastating, especially since I thought the audition had gone pretty well.) He was willing to take me on as a student, and it meant free loan of an instrument and free lessons, so I took up the offer and have only occasionally looked back.

Aaron conducts WAYO’s Babies Proms at WAAPA in 2010

What was a highlight of your time in WAYO programs?

So many options to choose from. The European tours were definite highlights. (Both the playing and non-playing side of things. From seeing a show at the Moulin Rouge with other senior students to drinking Trappist beers in a laundromat in Belgium because we’d run out of clothes.) As were the tours out to the Pilbara. (Although I think Mount Tom Price remains the coldest outdoor concert I have ever done.) And we did play a lot of great repertoire. Mahler 1 with Isaiah Jackson stands out on that front in particular. But I think the real highlight was the friends we made along the way. There are people who I went through WAYO with who I then went through uni with and who have remained colleagues and friends through all these years.

WAYO Europe Tour 2003

What skills, musical and otherwise, did you take away from your time at WAYO?

I learnt a lot in the orchestra, particularly as a section leader. It really encouraged me to get to know the full score and to have an understanding of exactly how our part fit in with what the rest of the orchestra were doing. And having a chance to play through the amount of repertoire that I did over the years was really useful when entering the professional world. When I was booked for multiple weeks back to back with WASO, it took the pressure off knowing that I’d already played a lot of the major works that we were doing. Also, I’m not particularly proud of this, but my lack of practice back in the earlier years of being in the Philharmonic and more junior ensembles meant that I got to be very good at sight reading my way through things. (Which has definitely come in handy later in life. That said, not an approach I’d recommend.)

How does music feature now in your life?

I mean, I’ve built my entire professional life (including quite a number of international and interstate tours) around it, so I’d say it features pretty heavily. And now that I’ve pivoted into composition, it’s really become a key part of how I express myself. Also, if I hadn’t been so heavily involved in music, I wouldn’t have been on exchange with other members of Decibel in Hamburg, I wouldn’t have met my partner of seven years, and we wouldn’t have a one year old child. So it seems to shape my personal life quite strongly as well.