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Erin Helyard

harpsichord

“It’s always the greatest of pleasures to perform Bach with some of Australia’s best practitioners of eighteenth-century music; the music of Bach has been a constant companion for me for decades, and I constantly in awe of his technique and craft.” Erin Helyard

Erin Helyard has been acclaimed as an inspiring conductor, a virtuosic and expressive performer of the harpsichord and fortepiano, and as a lucid scholar who is passionate about promoting meaningful discourse between musicology and performance. Helyard is particularly active in reviving in both score and performance neglected seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera, including works by Handel, Vivaldi, Grétry, Salieri, Gluck, Cavalli, and Charpentier. As Artistic Director and co-founder of the celebrated Pinchgut Opera and the Orchestra of the Antipodes (Sydney) he has forged new standards of excellence in historically-informed performance in Australia. Operas conducted under his direction have been awarded Best Opera at the Helpmann Awards for two consecutive years (2015 and 2016). Helyard duets in nineteenth-century repertoire on historical pianos with renowned Alkan exponent Stephanie McCallum and on fortepiano and harpsichord he has recently been described as “Australia’s most engaging soloist” by Limelight magazine (2016).

In 2017 Helyard was awarded a major Australian Research Council Discovery Grant for a collaborative project with colleagues at the University of Sydney, Oxford University, and the Australian National University (Performing Transdisciplinarity: Image, Music, and Text in Eighteenth-Century Print Culture). His research interests include historical performance practice, eighteenth-century music, seventeenth- to nineteenth-century opera, intersections of music and capitalism, Ancient Greek music, the cultural life of the piano, Bourdieu, music and philosophy, the history of music notation, re-mixes and revisions, and topics related to the body, gender, sexuality, and feminism.

“Helyard paces the music to draw out this duality, and not only created balanced nuance from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra but, with impressive versatility, dispatched organ concertos from pit and stage just because Handel thought they would liven things up (they did).” Sydney Morning Herald, 2017

“Conductor Erin Helyard and the Orchestra of the Antipodes’ swift speeds, rhythmic verve, well-integrated ensemble sound and curvaceous phrasing captured its captivating mix of propulsive energy and reflective lyricism.” The Australian, 2016