Nicolette Fraillon to return to Australia

to head Canberra School of Music

Conductor, Nicolette Fraillon is to return to Australia to become Director of the Canberra School of Music.

Ms Fraillon, who is Musical Director and Chief Conductor of the NationalBallet of the Netherlands, takes up her appointment at the School of Music in June next year.

Announcing her appointment to staff in the School today, ANU's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deane Terrell, said Ms Fraillon's leadership of the School would reinforce its reputation as a pre-eminent music institution.

Ms Fraillon, a graduate of the University of Melbourne (equal first place in year), studied viola and music theory in Australia, Austria and Germany.

She has been a member of The Mozart Players, Chamber Orchestra, Amsterdam; the Haydn Quartet, Esthernhazy Palace, Austria; and the Kastalia Quartet, Hanover, Germany.

>From 1991-92 she was Assistant Musical Director of Les Miserables in Amsterdam and The Hague and from 1992 and 1993 conducted the Netherlands Dance Theatre and the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra. Ms Fraillon became Musical Director and Chief Conductor of the National Ballet of the Netherlands in 1994. She has been a guest conductor with orchestras in the Netherlands, Finland, Japan and Australia and has taught the violin and viola and at The International School Vienna. In 1993 and 1994 Ms Fraillon was guest conductor and Lecturer in the Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne. Ms Fraillon is a Juror, Amsterdam Performing Arts Composition Prize, and a board member of the Rudi van Dyk Foundation.

Professor Terrell said that the ANU was very pleased that a young, talented Australian would return from Europe to take up leadership of the School of Music.

He said Professor William Hawkey had agreed to remain as Director of the School until Ms Fraillon took up her appointment.

For further information: Ross Cornwell, Secretary, Institute of the Arts.

Phone: 02 6249 5702.

Canberra, 14 October 1997 45/97