BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
February 21 was a special day for Greater Western Sydney. The region, home to one in every 11 Australians, has opened its heart to a new orchestra.
Violinists Maximilian Holzner and Kristian Winther launched the Western Sydney Youth Philharmonic — a training platform enabling music students to access much-needed live performance experiences close to home.
It’s the first step along the way for Maximilian and Kristian: next year, students from this youth orchestra will also have the opportunity to level up to the Western Sydney Philharmonic, where they will perform alongside professional musicians.
In this interview, we chat with Maximilian, the chair of the new “West Phil”; and Kristian, its founding artistic director. They tell us how they’re planning to increase access to arts and culture in this vibrant community, launching the region’s newest professional orchestra in over a century.
Kristian and Maximilian, why does Greater Western Sydney need a new orchestra?
MAXIMILIAN: There is a need for a sustainable, truly professional orchestra in and of itself, for sure. However, there is a need or requirement for a professional orchestra in a region with 10 per cent of the nation’s population as part of a ‘pipeline’ of sorts – from the ground up to the professional. […] We are beginning with programs aimed at talented students.
So, tell us why you personally wanted to be the ones to start up this orchestra.
KRISTIAN: Other youth orchestras in the region have come and gone. So it was a major focus for us to establish a permanent youth ensemble in the region. But there hasn’t been an orchestra primarily made up of professionals in Western Sydney for a very long time.
It’s hard to talk about why ‘personally’ this has to happen. I don’t feel that this is a sort of legacy or vanity project at all, otherwise it simply wouldn’t work. I feel that the state of music education in this country is generally okay, but that there are many problems too, and so there is a duty for every musician to try to create something that creates opportunities for young people.
I look at the opportunities I had as a young person, and I see that many of those things don’t exist anymore, or are behind a paywall. Making this youth orchestra free for the young musicians was absolutely crucial, from my point of view.
M: I think Kristian’s qualification is important. I might also explain my story a little. I’m not from Sydney originally; was born in Adelaide and lived in many other places. I moved here from the United Kingdom when I met my future wife. I knew that in marrying, I’d never leave Sydney and her big and wonderful Italian family. So Sydney became my home.
I was gravitating towards teaching at this time — finding my real passion. I looked to where I could best deploy myself. […] Out West, Parramatta, things have changed somewhat over the years, but I couldn’t believe how few qualified and passionate teachers there were outside the privileged contexts of a few private schools. So I based myself in Parramatta, and within no time had a thriving studio with over 60 students myself.
I looked for avenues for my students to perform and apply their skills. Boy, were the pickings slim or uninspiring! Almost always second-tier, compared to the city. So I started organising concerts in conjunction with other teachers and schools in the region.
The moment or spark for West Phil occurred when Kristian arrived back from a stint overseas. I brought him in to coach and perform alongside my students. The effect was absolutely electric. It would be like having [Australian professional tennis player] Ash Barty come to a Parramatta tennis academy.
Kristian and I knew we had to take this to the next level, which meant getting organised and assembling the right board and finding a perfect patron — a ministry of talents capable and passionate enough to deliver this vision. We are humbled and eternally grateful to have this support.
You do realise you’ve launched an orchestra during a pandemic, though.
K: We’re painfully aware of it! We had projects planned for 2020 which naturally had to be shelved, as was the norm across the industry. But we took it as an opportunity to build and extend our board and artistic committee, and really prepare ourselves for when projects became possible to put on again.
M: We certainly did use the enforced benching time during the pandemic to strengthen the organisation from within. This also included obtaining full deductible gift recipient status and inclusion on the Register of Cultural Organisations.
We’ve benefited from a huge amount of goodwill, whether from prospective students, parents, tutors or the community generally. The opportunities in the space we are launching into – opportunities for talented music students to work alongside top professionals – is still fraught, especially if it involves interstate travel for participants. So there’s a need.
It’s also worth mentioning that the region has changed a great deal in just the decade that I’ve been working in the region. Our MC for the launch, Michael Campbell of Westwords, was voted Outstanding Business Leader by the Western Sydney Chamber of Commerce. This is someone in the arts! Telling.
There is huge demand and expectation now in Western Sydney for the same sorts of institutions and level of quality that the rest of Sydney enjoys. 2.5 million people. The time has very much arrived.
You’ve assembled your board and artistic committee — but how did you go about convincing them that your orchestra is the orchestra to bring to life right now?
K: There were a lot of Zoom meetings with board members and our future conductors and musicians. We’ve got a wonderful crew of musicians to tutor and play alongside the students for this year.
Western Sydney is such a huge area, and it needs its own cultural centres and icons. Our board members from the area didn’t need much convincing of that!
M: Kristian and I have always had an eye to the long-term vision, a vision which involves the community as a real stakeholder. These kinds of regional opportunities or pathways – our Youth Philharmonic programs and, soon, professional orchestra – are essential to long-term viability. They are already common to sporting codes, from grassroots all the way to the highest professional levels. But when it comes to so many forms of music-making in Western Sydney, a region with 10 per cent of the nation’s population, most children still need to look outside of the [region] — and even then, issues of accessibility often arise. This long-term vision and emphasis on community really appealed the our board members.
How do you feel the Western Sydney Philharmonic will enrich the region?
K: Talking to the students, it’s pretty clear that they don’t want to have to travel into Sydney to have this sort of experience, let alone get their parents and anyone who’d want to watch them to travel to Sydney for the performance as well. Why not have this experience in Parramatta? Western Sydney is a region bigger than some capital cities — why shouldn’t it have its own equivalent number of cultural performances and events?
M: Agree totally with Kristian. We want to engage with the children of Western Sydney. We want to find ways to inspire and show them what other opportunities await them, that are for them, belong to their region, and of which they can lay claim to and be proud of.
Moving beyond the launch and our student programs, we will necessarily be engaging not only with the children of Western Sydney more broadly, but with the community — fostering a profession, employment. All this is enriching.
What’s your long-term dream or vision for the orchestra?
K: Ultimately, we’d love to have the Western Sydney Youth Philharmonic doing four or five intensive programs a year, or perhaps even a year-round weekly rehearsal schedule. And then also, the professional orchestra, the Western Sydney Philharmonic, would act as an employment opportunity for players who come from the youth orchestra. This is really crucial for us. So many orchestral academies and fellowships worldwide have a very low percentage of their trainees going into long term employment within the business that trains them, due to the low turnover rate in most symphony orchestras.
Additionally, we want to give student chamber groups opportunities to perform, and to bring professional chamber ensembles to perform in the region too.
M: All this, as Kristian has outlined. Moreover, we — and I speak on behalf of the board here — want West Phil to be every bit an inspiring, valuable, and enduring part of the fabric of the Western Sydney community. That’s the dream.
What can we expect to see from Western Sydney Philharmonic in the immediate future — and especially, what sort of music?
K: We’re starting small. This year, we’ll present two Western Sydney Youth Philharmonic concerts; a string orchestra program in April, and then a large orchestra in September performing Shostakovich and Mahler.
In my experience, the usual sort of more standard youth orchestra works don’t inspire young musicians to stretch beyond their capacity. I remember being bored silly playing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol and Saint-Saens as a youth, and much later watching in amazement as every player in the Melbourne Youth Orchestra would grow musically and technically so fast when challenged by Stravinsky, John Adams, and Messiaen. Maybe audiences are still scared of Bartok and Schoenberg and various other 100-year-old music, but kids aren’t, and they need it to stay inspired and evolve as musicians.
For more information on the Western Sydney Philharmonic, visit the website. The youth orchestra branch of West Phil was launched at Old Government House, Parramatta on 21 February.
Images supplied.
