Congratulations on winning Limelight’s 2018 Australian Artist of the Year: Critics’ Choice!

I’m absolutely delighted. It just reinforces that my work is connecting with audiences and that’s very gratifying. We’re vain creatures, artists, we never get tired of being told people like us. I often go a bit out there on programming and this indicates people respond to that so that’s very satisfying.

Simone YoungSimone Young. Photo © Monika Rittershaus 

Looking back over your career, would you say that your ethos or principles as an artist have evolved?

I’m constantly striving just to do better work. Probably with the luxury of 30 years’ career behind me, I now have the options to make decisions about where I work and what I do, which is a luxury you don’t have when you’re starting out. And I make quite deliberate choices to go to some of my favourite ensembles, to try somewhere new, to do a certain amount of education work. And I’m in the fortunate position where I can choose to split my year up along those lines and I would say that’s the big difference with having all this experience and three decades of...