Roland Peelman
Belgian-born conductor, pianist and artistic director Roland Peelman has shaped Australian music for more than three decades. A mentor to composers and singers, he is known especially for his long leadership of The Song Company and for championing new work.
For his commitment to the creative arts in Australia he has received many accolades, among them the NSW Award for “the most outstanding contribution to Australian Music by an individual” in 2005. In 2006 the Sydney Morning Herald named him “musician of the year”, and he has since been cited regularly among the most influential figures in the Australian arts. In 2020 he was appointed an honorary Member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to music”, and in 2023 he received the APRA Art Music National Luminary Award. Belgium has likewise honoured him, naming him Commandeur in the Order of Leopold in 2023.
Across twenty-five years he transformed The Song Company into one of Australia’s most outstanding and inventive ensembles, while also initiating and directing a substantial body of new orchestral, vocal and operatic work. Before that tenure he spent seven years with Opera Australia (1984–91). He was Music Director of Sydney Metropolitan Opera (1989–94) and of the Hunter Orchestra in Newcastle (1990–97), and Artistic Director of the Canberra International Music Festival from 2015 to 2024.
Roland Peelman is featured on the following titles
Dreams: Works for Small Orchestra
Australian composer David Joseph gathers choreographically inspired works for small orchestra from 1986 to 1994 in Dreams, tracing memory, dream states and perception through richly textured, psychologically charged writing.
Roland Peelman also appears on
Cool Black: Chamber Works by Rosalind Page
Inspired by Apollinaire, Lorca and Harðarson, Cool Black gathers three contrasting chamber song cycles by Rosalind Page, performed by the Australian vocal ensemble Halcyon.