Tributes have been flowing since the death of Paul Goodchild was announced earlier this week. The much-loved musician died in Sydney on Tuesday 29 March, having struggled for two years with a rare form of cancer. He was a few months short of his 62nd birthday.

Paul Goodchild in 2008. Photo supplied

Born in Sydney on 23 August 1960, Paul William Dominic Goodchild was almost pre-destined to veer towards music and left-leaning political views. His father, Clifford Goodchild, was the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Tuba and union representative. In 1985, 18-year-old Paul joined the SSO as its Associate Principal Trumpet, one of the youngest-ever appointments to the orchestra. He held that position until his premature retirement in late 2020.

Over the ensuing decades, Goodchild provided many memorable moments for SSO and thence to ABC radio audiences: the Mahler cycles of successive SSO maestri like Stuart Challender and Edo de Waart; the clarion calls at the start of Richard Strauss’s Zarathustra and the closing moments of Peter Sculthorpe’s Kakadu; concertos by Australian composers William Lovelock and Alan Holley; the annual Sydney Philharmonia Choir performances of Messiah where his performances of “The...