Strathfield Symphony Orchestra

Bernard Walz made his conducting debut with the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra in June, 2010 and his US conducting debut in Colorado, USA (Pueblo Symphony Orchestra) in February, 2011. In October Bernard conducted Strathfield Symphony Orchestra at the inaugural “Breakfast On Bondi” event as part of the Crave Sydney International Food Festival. He has recently completed his Master of Music Studies degree with the University of Melbourne, studying conducting with John Hopkins. He completed his orchestration studies with Berklee School of Music (Boston, USA), and holds a Diploma of Educational Studies with the London College of Teachers (UK).

Bernard studied classical piano from the age of six years and has established an
international reputation for his dynamic concert performances. He is the winner of three consecutive Australian Entertainment “MO” Awards as “Variety Instrumentalist of the Year” for Excellence in Live Performance. Internationally, he has been awarded four “Instrumentalist of the Year”, two “Entertainer of the Year” and “Variety Artist of the Year” awards with six-star Crystal Cruises, Inc. His debut recording, “Piano Passion” was a Number One success in Australia (1994), knocking the Three Tenor’s Dodger Stadium album from the top of the charts upon its release. Bernard is currently working with his long-standing mentor and friend, Maestro Tommy Tycho, to complete Tommy’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (the 2^nd movement of which is featured in this programme).

Bernard’s performing career has included performances at the Concert Hall of the Opera House in Sydney, Sydney Entertainment Centre, Melbourne Concert Hall,
Adelaide Festival Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane, as well as Festival Hall in London with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Village Vanguard in New York. He has toured in
Australia and internationally with legendary harmonica virtuoso, the late Larry Adler, and with the “Phantom” himself, Michael Crawford.

www.bernardwalz.com

Maria Lindsay has an active career as soloist, chamber musician, artistic director, ensemble leader and teacher.

Maria has recently established the Lurline Chamber Orchestra, of which she is Leader and Co-Artistic Director. With Lurline she has performed, to great acclaim, the World Premiere of the Violin Concerto dedicated to her by Tommy Tycho. Her performances of the Concerto received their second season this year. Maria is in demand for her vibrant concerto performances, making regular appearances as soloist as well as guest concertmaster with various orchestras. Violin recitals, unaccompanied recitals and chamber music with many of the country’s finest musicians form a regular part of her performance schedule.

Maria has held positions with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony and
Australian Chamber Orchestra. With these orchestras, she has toured extensively in
Australia, North and South America, Europe and Asia. She recently took part in the
inaugural season of the elite Australian World Orchestra.

In 2004, Maria initiated the Blue Mountains Chamber Concerts, of which she was Artistic Director for 6 years. She actively programs new works and has performed contemporary chamber music with Klangforum Vienna, the Seymour Group Sydney, Alpha Ensemble and Ensemble Offspring. She includes baroque music in her programming, and in 2007
performed the entire Mystery Sonatas of Biber, a rarity due to the length and virtuosity of the work, as well as the 15 different scordatura tunings required. Maria was a founding member of  the Apollo Trio, with whom she performed in Sydney and regional NSW for 6 years. She has made broadcasts for the A.B.C. and 2MBS-FM.

A passion for making good music regularly accessible to more people has born fruit through Lurline and Blue Mountains metropolitan and regional series. Maria’s
programming has won her much praise, not only for the artistic structure of each
individual program, but also for allowing new music as well as older but lesser-known works to find their place amongst the established repertoire and to be enjoyed by all
audiences.

Maria teaches at Sydney Conservatorium and has taught at schools including Sydney
Grammar, and privately. She enjoys working with young chamber orchestras and chamber groups and currently conducts the Lurline Youth Chamber Orchestra.

Maria graduated from Sydney Conservatorium of Music with High Distinction and as
Student of the Year. She received the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust Award to
further her studies in Vienna. There she was the recipient of the Alban Berg Quartet
Foundation Award in 1989.

Tommy Tycho was born in Budapest in 1928. His musical life started as a child prodigy pianist. He played George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra at age 10. He commenced studying at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in
Budapest, where his teachers included Leo Weiner and Zoltán Kodály. He and his parents had adopted Lutheranism in an attempt to disguise their Jewishness, but to no avail – he was interned in a German forced labour camp in 1943 at age 15, and was lucky to survive. He resumed his studies after the war, but fled his country ahead of the Communist takeover while still only in his third year of study. From 1948 to 1951 he lived in Iran, where he was the personal pianist for the Shah of Iran. There he met a woman named Eve, another Hungarian, who became his wife. They emigrated to Australia in 1951.

He was Musical Director at the Seven Network for 15 years, 1956–1971, was involved in nine Royal Command Performances, and has conducted all the ABC symphony orchestras. His work was an important element of many official openings (Sydney Opera House, Sydney Entertainment Centre, Sydney Football Stadium, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane 1982 Commonwealth Games, World Expo 88, Darling Harbour, major sporting grand finals, etc.). In 2008 he performed at the piano for Crown Princess Mary of Denmark at the opening of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. (In 1980, after a heart attack, he had been treated personally by Dr Victor Chang.)

His compositions include 3 overtures, 3 concertos, television music, film scores (including Young Einstein and Reckless Kelly), arrangements of over 1,500 pieces for film and
television, music for Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games and a new Australian musical, Get Happy (2003). In 2003 Tommy Tycho was commissioned by Symphony Australia to compose and arrange an overture for the 75th birthday celebrations of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. That same year he conducted the Queensland Orchestra for concerts with Anthony Warlow, and was the arranger and conductor for Warlow’s album, Let’s Face the Music; and he conducted the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in a Lounge concert. Tommy wrote a series of special feature arrangements for Australian clarinetist, Andy Firth when he featured as guest artist with the Atlanta symphony orchestra in 2006. Tommy also orchestrated and conducted three albums for Bernard Walz between 1994 and 2006, as well as preparing numerous orchestrations for Bernard’s appearances with both symphony orchestras and small ensembles.

Kenichi was born in 1986 in Sydney, and began his cello lesson at the age of two and a half with Takao Mizushima, his father, and has appeared as a soloist on many occasions since he was five. Kenichi has toured Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Italy, England, Singapore, USA and New Zealand both as a soloist and an ensemble musician. At the age of eleven he won the cello section of the Inaugural Young Instrumentalist Competition.

Kenichi’s debut as a soloist with a full orchestra was at the Adelaide Town Hall when he was twelve years old. Since then he has performed concertos regularly with orchestras nationally and internationally, including a performance with the Korean Symphony Orchestra in 2001. Under the tutelage of his teacher, Mr Zoltan Szabo, he has won numerous local eisteddfods and competitions that include the senior section of the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra Secondary School Concerto Competition in 2002 at the age of fifteen and Open Age cello section of the City of Sydney McDonald’s Challenge in 2002 and 2003. He was a recitalist at the National Youth Concerto Competition in 2003 and gave a forty-five minutes live recital for the 2MBS FM radio in 2004, 2005 and 2006. He was also the winner of 2MBS FM Young Performer’s Award in 2006. Kenichi played the Schumann Cello Concerto with Strathfield Symphony Orchestra in 2003.

After he completed high school as a music scholar, he began his Bachelor of Music
Performance Degree study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he received the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Board of Governors Scholarship in 2005, Joys Billing
Memorial Scholarship for the cello in 2005 and 2006 and Mary Patricia Bell Grant in 2006. In 2005 he was accepted into ENCORE Summer School at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Ohio, USA on a scholarship under Richard Aaron.

In January 2007, Kenichi visited Europe to expand his cello playing horizon, and received tuition from two world class cellists in Hungary and Germany, Miklos Perenyi and
Alexander Baillie, and was offered a scholarship to study under Professor Baillie.

In 2007, Kenichi was offered a contract to work with Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra as a soloist to play Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variation during their Sydney season, and invited to play for Melbourne season as well, alongside Australia’s prominent cellist Emma-Jane Murphy.