Encore Bequest Circle
Our Newest Encore Bequest Circle Member
The Encore Bequest Circle acknowledges and celebrates the extraordinary generosity of those who have pledged to support Melbourne Recital Centre with a gift in their Will.
We encourage you to let us know if you are leaving a gift to Melbourne Recital Centre in your Will so that we can thank you in person, share more detail about how your gift will be used, and invite you to join the Encore Bequest Circle. You will have the opportunity to have your name listed on our programs, and be invited to participate in special gatherings, concerts, behind-the-scenes tours and other exclusive events.
Thank you to our newest Encore Bequest Circle member, Roger Chao, for speaking with us about what inspired him to include Melbourne Recital Centre in his Will.
What sparked your interest in music?
Before I had the words for the larger matters of life, joy, grief, courage, tenderness, I recognised them in sound.
When I was younger, I tried to teach myself the piano and the guitar. I loved the idea of music, and I felt its pull, but I did not yet have the patience, the resources, the insight, or the foresight to persevere. With the benefit of time, I see that this is not a personal shortcoming so much as a common human story - talent is rarely enough, and desire is rarely enough. What makes the difference, especially for young people, is sustained encouragement, access, good teaching, and a culture that treats practice not as punishment but as possibility.
That is part of what I hope support for Melbourne Recital Centre can help provide - the conditions that turn aspiration into capacity. Not everyone will become a professional musician, nor should that be the measure of success. But everyone deserves the chance to encounter excellence, to be mentored, and to discover what steady attention can make of them. If my gift helps even a few people like my younger self - curious, moved, but uncertain how to persist, then it will be doing real work.
Tell us about an experience at Melbourne Recital Centre that made an impact on you?
Many places can host performances. Fewer can host attention. Melbourne Recital Centre understands that the audience is not a crowd receiving a product, it is a community practising presence together.
One evening that stays with me was attending one of Wispelwey’s recitals. The performance was superb, but what moved me was what happened in the room. People arrived carrying the day, noise, urgency, distraction. Then, as the music began, modern restlessness loosened its grip. A collective steadiness emerged, not sentimental, but disciplined.
And there was a moment between movements when no one rushed to applaud. No premature clapping. No need to perform sophistication. Just silence, intelligent, respectful silence. That silence mattered to me because it felt civic. It reminded me that public life can still be dignified, that strangers can share something profound without being divided into camps, that a city can still have spaces where we are invited to be our best selves, and to carry that self back into the street.
The Centre’s programming reinforces this. It honours tradition without treating it as a museum. It makes room for discovery without condescension. It pursues excellence without turning excellence into exclusion.
What inspired you to include Melbourne Recital Centre in your Will? How does this connect with the legacy you would like to leave for future generations?
I included Melbourne Recital Centre in my Will for two reasons - gratitude, and stewardship. Gratitude, because the Centre has given me experiences that reminded me of what human beings can do at their best - compose, practise, perform, and listen with care, and stewardship, because institutions like this do not endure by accident. They endure because people decide they matter, and act accordingly.
Melbourne Recital Centre represents a particular idea of the common good. It gives the life of the mind and spirit a public home. It gathers people not as consumers, but as citizens, people capable of listening, reflection, and shared experience.
A bequest is a way of extending the horizon beyond one lifetime. It is a practical way of saying - this is worth protecting. I want young people, especially those who may not yet feel that these spaces “belong” to them, to have the chance to encounter excellence up close. I want the Centre to keep commissioning new work, supporting artists, and keeping its doors open. Culture must be living, not merely preserved.
To learn more about leaving a bequest to Melbourne Recital Centre, please contact:
Belinda Locke
Philanthropy Manager
(03) 9207 2648
belinda.locke@melbournerecital.com.au