Roger Woodward is one of Australia’s most important living musicians. A long career has seen the world-renowned pianist, composer, conductor and teacher acclaimed as a champion of late-20th and early-21st-first century repertoire. Having worked with and played music by a who’s who of European and American composers that includes Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and Morton Feldman, he’s equally associated with works by Australian composers such as Richard Meale, Anne Boyd, Ross Edwards and Larry Sitsky. These days, he is based in San Francisco, but he’s returning to his childhood suburb of Chatswood for a celebratory 50th-anniversary concert with the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra (KPO) and to raise funds for the Sisters of Charity Foundation. Limelight took the opportunity to ask him some questions.


You grew up in Chatswood. What are your fondest memories?

Learning organ works and Bach cantatas at the Chatswood Church of Christ, performing with our school choir, walking to piano lessons at Winifred Pope’s, playing with friends in Blue Gum Park, climbing trees, playing cricket in the street with orange boxes for wickets, catching the tram with my big brother or one of my sisters to go to the beach. It was a very...