A regular director with Opera Australia, Constantine Costi was responsible last year for the triumphant production of La Traviata on Sydney Harbour. He’s worked with other leading Australian arts companies including Pinchgut Opera and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and is co-artistic director of Red Line Productions at Sydney’s Old Fitz. Simon Moore speaks with Con in the lead up to him taking on Halevy’s La Juive with Opera Australia, to be performed on these shores for the first time. As well as giving some insights into this opera, he talks about his next show with Red Line, Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel, and shares stories from the earlier period of his career, creating guerrilla productions of operas in Newtown, plus his handy abilities with a fish and a filleting knife.

La Juive is on at the Sydney Opera House from 9 to 26 March.

The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel is on at the Old Fitz Theatre from 31 March to 23 April.

Multi-Helpmann Award winner Amber McMahon plays Eve Kendall, one of the ultimate Hitchcock Femme Fatales, in the stage adaptation of North by Northwest at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre from the 9th of March. In this conversation, Simon Moore takes Amber on a deep dive into her 20 year stage career and delve into the craft of acting. She’s worked with Cate Blanchett, picnicked at Hanging Rock, and climbed Mount Rushmore in high heels.

He is a conductor who has fast established himself as a versatile artist covering the symphonic, operatic and ballet genres. He’s made a splash in Europe with such orchestras as the Mariinsky, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Odessa National Philharmonic. He and his wife, soprano Eleanor Lyons, have more recently created Live at Yours, an exciting and ever growing project, bringing top quality artists to unique and intimate settings.

Vladimir speaks with Simon Moore about the creation and development of Live at Yours, regales us with tales of studying in St Petersburg and working with luminaries like Simone Young and Iván Fischer, plus providing some significant insights into the creative process.

Jeanell Carrigan is an Associate Professor in the Collaborative Piano Unit at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She has performed throughout Australia and Europe as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborative duo partner. Her area of research is Australian solo piano repertoire and more recently in the piano music composed by early 20th Century Australian women composers. She’s released 32 albums of solo Australian piano and chamber works and has written several books.

In this conversation, Jeanell speaks with Simon Moore in depth about her most recent project – the recording and publication of the first four piano trios written in Australia, by Australian composers, entitled Music for The Salon Trio.

He is a man who has entertained Australia for over 30 years. He’s danced on film in Strictly Ballroom, stepped into stilettos for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, donned top hat and whip for a tightrope-walking PT Barnum, and everything in between – including West Side Story, Singing in the Rain, The Pirates Penzance, Cabaret, and Anything Goes. But perhaps his most well-known performance has been to bring entertainer Peter Allen back to life in the original Australian production of The Boy from Oz.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Todd speaks with Simon Moore about these varied roles, plus his start in show business, being a judge on Dancing with the Stars, as well as some of the parts he’s enjoyed a bit less than others.

It’s difficult to find a more well-rounded musician than violinst Henning Kraggerud. The Norwegian virtuoso has had a career that covers everything – a soloist, composer, arranger, improviser, plus he’s the Artistic Director of the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra.

The discussion, from when he was visiting Australia in 2017 to guest direct the Australian Chamber Orchestra, provides some fascinating insights  into his multi-faceted approach to music-making in his composing, arranging and improvising.

If you’ve ever had the chance to see Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto perform live, you’ll know he is quite the entertainer. It’s been said that he strips every piece, however familiar it is, back to first principles, and we get to hear it as if for the first time.

At the time of this conversation in 2016, he had just been appointed artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s emerging artists ensemble – ACO Collective – a position he held until 2019. 

A  great friend of Australia and of the ACO, Pekka is always an absolute joy to talk to. In this program, he gets out his violin in the studio to  underscore some of his points, and we even get a live performance of a Finnish folk tune.

(Originally aired in September 2021)

Olli Mustonen is music's ultimate triple threat – a virtuosic pianist, an extraordinary conductor, and an outstanding composer. He speaks to host Simon Moore about his start playing the harpsichord from the age of 5 in his native Finland, as well as sharing a story about a misprint in a program which led to him to having to rearrange one of his chamber works for full orchestra, and how he prefers the simple word “musician” to cover his many talents.  

This conversation is from 2016 when he was visiting Australia to guest direct the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Dean Bryant is a multi-award winning theatre director and writer. He has a string of directorial credits, including (with the Melbourne Theatre Company, where he was associate director from 2016 thru 2019): The Lady in the Van and An Ideal Husband; for Opera Australia Anything Goes; and for the Hayes he directed Assassins, as well as their debut production Sweet Charity, for which he won the Helpmann award for 'Best Director of a Musical', and to top it all off, he’s the worldwide Associate Director of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. 

His creativity doesn’t stop with direction, as he’s the co-writer of the musical version of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career, as well as many others. He's currently in Sydney directing Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which will be back at the Hayes Theatre at the conclusion of the present lockdown.

(Originally aired in June 2021)

Shane Placentino has made the move from ballet dancer, to choreographer, and now opera director. He began his career with the Australian Ballet in 1991, dancing the entire classical and contemporary repertoire. He went on to be with the Sydney Dance Company from 2002, but more recently he’s hung up his dance shoes and moved into direction with Opera Australia - currently being the Revival Director for Aida, which opened at the Sydney Opera House on 22 June, and is due to return again after the current lockdown.