WE’RE counting down the most influential people who help make the westside a great place to live.
There are so many people in our community who are doing great things and who are helping to make great things happen.
The list is only a sample and people are encouraged to suggest others.
Let’s acknowledge the people who help to make our community the great place it is.
Today, we look at our arts greats. From Robert Forster and Trent Dalton to David Berthold, our area is packed with world-class arts talent. Tomorrow, we look at the west’s business and community honour roll.
ROBERT FORSTER
The Singer-songwriter, guitarist and music critic is as Brissie as, well, The Gap.
The man who co-founded indie rock group, The Go-Betweens, with fellow musician Grant McLennan in 1977 now enjoys his post-career semi-retirement in the leafy westside suburb.
Songs such as 1988’s smooth crowd-pleaser Streets of Your Town showed Brisbanites they could be proud of their chosen home.
The influence of the duo on other big Brisbane acts that were to come later cannot be understated.
Even city officials had to eventually sit up and take notice, renaming the toll bridge from West End to Milton after the seminal band.
Streets of Your Town became the band’s biggest chart hit in both Australia and Britain.
The follow-up single, Was There Anything I Could Do?, was a No. 16 hit on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the US.
But by 1989, after six albums, the band was no more and Forster began a solo music career which also spanned six albums.
The band did re-form, in 2000, and released three more studio albums before McLennan’s tragic death from a heart attack in 2006.
In 2001 Cattle and Cane was selected by Australasian Performing Right Association as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time.
In the early 1990s Forster married German musician Karen Bäumler. They have two children.
FIONA MAXWELL
Another leading light of The Gap, the Brisbane Powerhouse CEO’s role makes her one of the most influential figures in the city’s arts scene.
Her career has spanned the non-profit, government and university sectors in Australia and the US.
Before her gig at the Powerhouse, Maxwell was Queensland manager for Philanthropy Australia, which supports philanthropists and non-profit groups.
She was state manager for Artsupport Australia, another group fostering cultural philanthropy, and executive director of the Next Wave Festival and many other industry bodies.
An Arts graduate from QUT, she studied teaching but soon realised she didn’t want to work in a classroom.
She also realised she would never set the world on fire as an artist, but had a gift for organising.
After winning an internship at the renowned Getty Museum in California she returned to Australia, working in Victoria before the role at the Powerhouse came up.
TENZIN CHOEGYAL
From refugee to world-renowned musician living in The Gap, life has taken Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal to all corners of the world.
He has played for the Dalai Llama and performed at Carnegie Hall in New York with the likes of Philip Glass, regarded by some as the greatest living composer, and legendary rocker Patti Smith.
Choegyal also spent a month with Glass collaborating on composing the soundtrack for a film about the Dalai Lama.
Choegyal, who moved to Australia in 1997, honed his talent listening to his mother’s songs in the style of Tibetan nomads, and he attributes much of his passion to his mother.
He uses his music as part of his activism on China’s brutal invasion of his homeland, and to help keep its rich cultural traditions alive.
As well as overseas stars, he has collaborated with a long list of Australian musicians such as Ash Grunwald.
He also has performed with Tibetan monks in exile, which he supports financially through his tours, as well as the Tibetan Children’s Villages, the school for Tibetan refugee children where he attended when he was a child.
TODD MACDONALD
Best known for his roles in Neighbours, The Secret Life of Us and Rush, the Canadian-born actor nowadays lives in Red Hill and wields considerable influence in the Brisbane arts scene as CEO and artistic director of Kelvin Grove theatre La Boite.
MacDonald graduated in 1996 from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and immediately popped up on Neighbours, playing Darren Stark.
He left two years later but made guest appearances over the following decade.
In the early 2000s, MacDonald played the recurring role of Nathan Lieberman on The Secret Life of Us and a supporting role in the drama series Rush in 2008 and also had a run in Blue Heelers.
In 2013, he appeared in David Ives’ play Venus in Fur at the Queensland Theatre Company.
DAVID BERTHOLD
Many Brisbanites don’t know who David Berthold is, but most of them love what he does.
The Paddington resident has lifted the Brisbane Festival up to an unmissable annual event during his time at the helm (2015-2019), which sadly ends with next month’s festival.
He has directed most of Australia’s major theatre companies at some point in his illustrious career, as well as international events and major arts organisations.
When he bows out this year, he will leave a legacy of having transformed the Brisbane Festival into Australia’s biggest such event, boasting more than one million attendees.
After training as an opera singer, he realised his talents lay in arts organisation and went on to head up Kelvin Grove’s La Boite, Opera Queensland, Queensland Theatre company and many others, and served on Arts Queensland committees and with QUT.
Berthold, who likes to reflect on his back deck and savour the coffee at Red Hill’s La Vosh Patisserie, promises his final Brisbane Festival, kicking off on September 6, will contain its most ambitious project yet, Invisible Cities, which will take over a Yeerongpilly warehouse.
BRENDAN JOYCE
His love for the arts began as a boy in Ayr, playing on the stage at the Burdekin Theatre with his sister, which to them was like the Sydney Opera House.
Many years, later, The Gap’s Brendan Joyce has the talent to actually play at the Sydney Opera House.
These days he is a violinist with, and artistic director and leader of, Camerata, the Brisbane-based chamber orchestra.
Camerata is so highly regarded some think it rivals the feted Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Awarded the Performance of the Year in 2014, Camerata — founded by Elizabeth Morgan — has made epic contributions to the Australian Festival of Chamber Music at many festivals.
Joyce studied music at the University of Queensland, furthering his studies in the US and attaining a Doctor of Musical Arts.
His leadership of Camerata has been described by The Australian as dynamic.
In demand as a leader and concertmaster, he has led the Orchestra of the Antipodes and Pinchgut Opera in Sydney.
Over a 20-year period he has played with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, including as guest Concertmaster and most recently as soloist in their world premiere performances.
He has also led for highly regarded performances and collaborations at the Brisbane Festival, Qld Music Festival, Brisbane Baroque, Darwin International Festival, Tyalgum Festival, the Festival of Tibet and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music.
In 2013, he was named a Queensland Culture Champion by the State Government.
TRENT DALTON
Journalist and author Trent Dalton is another star of The Gap.
After winning numerous awards for his articles with The Courier-Mail and The Australian, he recently made headlines himself with his breakthrough debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe.
The semi-autobiographical work of fiction, based loosely on his experiences growing up in Brisbane’s working class southwestern suburbs, proved such a hit it has been earmarked for a new movie to be directed by Joel Edgerton.
It has also won several major literary awards including the ABIA Book of the Year, Audio Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year.
Published only last year, Boy Swallows Universe was also longlisted this year’s prestigious Miles Franklin Award but missed out to Melissa Lucashenko.
TANIA FRAZER
The Brookfield solo oboist is the artistic director of the Southern Cross Soloists, one of Australia’s leading chamber music ensembles.
Frazer leads a busy life, also finding time to head up the world-class Bangalow Music Festival in northern NSW.
She has collaborated famous names such as Richard Tognetti and Teddy Tahu Rhodes.
A dedicated teacher, Frazer is the oboe lecturer at the University of Queensland and director of the Southern Cross Soloists Winter Music School.
At the age of just 23, she was invited by Zubin Mehta to perform with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under his direction.
She has also performed as principal oboe with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony, Stavanger Symphony in Norway, the Montreal Chamber Orchestra and was Principal Cor Anglais of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for a season.
From 2004-2008, she was Principal Oboe with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and performed as a soloist on the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2006 tour of Europe.
She has featured in the Who’s Who of Australian Women.
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