Roger Heagney

He instituted the degree course in church music taught, until recently, as the Bachelor of Music at Australian Catholic University, where he lectured in keyboard performance, music language studies, composition, choral training and conducting. His keyboard teaching has included several years as a guest at the Canberra School of Music and at the Pan Pacific Music Camps in Sydney (2004/05/06). He has served on selection panels and as an adjudicator at many competitions.

During Heagney’s 30-plus years as Director of Music at St Francis’ Church, Melbourne, the St Francis’ Choir gained a considerable reputation through numerous recordings, two overseas tours, and a steady programme of commissioning and performing new works by Australian composers. Many of his own compositions have been for liturgical use. Since 2007, when Merlyn Quaife gave the Australian, European and UK premieres of A Song Cycle written specially for her on texts by William Blake, he has collaborated with the poet Graeme Ellis. The song cycles Songs of Love and Death, Four Songs and Liederkreis followed; they were recorded by the ABC and released as Fortune My Foe, with Merlyn Quaife (soprano) and Andrea Katz (piano).

His arrangements include Rhapsody in Blue and the Overture to Die Fledermaus for eight pianos, and realisations of some of the Bach flute sonatas recorded with Vernon Hill, Virginia Taylor and Jacqueline Johnson. A disc of 20th-century piano trios by Shostakovich, Baran, Sculthorpe, Yu and Copland is available as 20th Century Piano Trios (MD 3176). In 1997 he received an OAM for services to music.

‘Mr Heagney’s velvet fingers encouraged his instrument to sing in a way Haydn might not have thought possible … The most finished playing of the week … Close blend of refined and mellow tone … Distinguished partnership by intimate give and take.’ (The Times, Dec. 1983)