Richard James Gill was an Australian conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic works. He was known as a music educator and for his advocacy for music education of children.
Life and career
Gill was born and raised in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood where he attended Marist College Eastwood. Prior to becoming a professional conductor, he was a music teacher at Marsden High School, West Ryde, in Sydney. One of his students was Kim Williams who later became a lifelong friend. In 1969, he was the founding conductor of the Strathfield Symphony Orchestra in Sydney. He continued as conductor in 1973–74 and returned in 1979 to conduct the orchestra's 10th anniversary concert. In 1971 he studied at the Orff Institute of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He was later invited to teach at the summer schools in Salzburg; on one occasion he was one of the pianists in the version of Carmina Burana for two pianos and percussion, conducted by Carl Orff himself. Gill was on staff at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from 1975 to 1982. He was conductor with the Sydney Youth Orchestra Association from 1977 to 1982, conducting the orchestra's tour of Singapore and Hong Kong in 1981. In 1982, he was invited as a principal presenter to the annual conference of the American Orff Schulwerk Association ; this led to further workshops and classes throughout the United States. Other posts include dean of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts WAAPA and Director of Chorus at the Opera Australia. In August 2005, Gill founded and was the inaugural artistic director of Victorian Opera. In 2013, along with Rachael Beesley and Nicole van Bruggen, he established the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. Gill was the artistic director and principal conductor of the orchestra. In 2014, he was appointed to succeed Paul Stanhope as musical director of the Sydney Chamber Choir. In February 2017, Gill conducted the inaugural gathering of the Sydney Flash Mob Choir at the City Recital Hall in Angel Place, Sydney, bringing together singers and would-be singers from all walks of life for a monthly 40-minute singalong. Gill died on 28 October 2018, aged 76, from colorectal and peritoneal cancer. The day before he died, more than 70 musicians gathered outside Gill's home in Stanmore, in Sydney's inner west, and played for Gill and his family, including "The Dam Busters March".
Music educator
Gill was an advocate for the importance of music, arts and physical education for all children, believing that singing should be the basis of all music education. Prior to his death, plans were well-advanced to establish a music-based primary school in New South Wales in 2020, to be known as the Muswellbrook Richard Gill National Music Academy.
Repertoire
Gill's operatic repertoire included performances with Opera Queensland, Opera Australia, the Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals, and Windmill Performing Arts. He conducted the world premieres of Alan John's The Eighth Wonder and Moya Henderson's Lindy with Opera Australia, and Jonathan Mills' The Ghost Wife at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 1999, and The Eternity Man at the Sydney Festival in 2004. For the Victorian Opera he conducted the new Australian works The Love of the Nightingale by Richard Mills and Alan John's Through the Looking Glass. His work in the concert hall included concerts with all the major Australian orchestras. In his Discovery and Ears Wide Open series of concerts, he took selected works from the traditional and the contemporary classical music repertoire and analysed the works in a humorous and entertaining manner, trying to find what made the works "tick" and to, as he says, listen to the music "with new ears".
The artist Jasper Knight, whom Gill taught music at school and whose grandmother worked with Gill in early childhood education, was a finalist at the Archibald Prize of 2005 with a portrait of Gill. In 2006 he appeared in the four-part ABC documentary/reality series Operatunity Oz, which sought Australian singers with opera potential, and in the 2007 follow-up episode Operatunity Oz – Twelve Months On. He was a semi-regular guest on ABC-TV's popular-music panel show Spicks and Specks. The 2018 reunion special of the show was dedicated in his memory. In January 2009, Gill worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's National Youth Orchestra in their National Music Camp in Napier, New Zealand, on the occasion of NYO's 50th anniversary celebrations.
