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
Peggy Glanville-Hicks: The Songs
World premiere recordings of songs by Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, including the cycle Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, sung by tenor Gerald English.
The Green CD
In a climate of rising concern for the planet, this programme of Australian choral works turns on nature and protest. Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? stands as a landmark of Australian choral writing, and one of its most popular.
Roland Peelman also appears on
From the Hungry Waiting Country
Three astounding works by Elliott Gyger are presented by Halcyon, featuring the thrilling voices of Jenny Duck-Chong and Alison Morgan with some of Australia’s best performers. Challenging music that rewards every listen, full of mystery and glistening textures, its narrative holds you to the end.
There Came a Wind like a Bugle: Chamber Music by Nigel Butterley
Chamber works spanning some thirty years by Nigel Butterley, one of Australia’s finest composers, for soloists, song and choir.
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.
Ecstatic Dances: Chamber Music, Vol. 1
One of Tall Poppies' most successful releases, this collection of Ross Edwards's chamber music sets his meditative sacred style beside the buoyant energy of his Maninya pieces.
Mozart Unexpurgated
The Song Company sings Mozart’s scatological canons and songs, with fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster improvising the accompaniments and taking two irreverent solo turns.