Three Choirs Festival hires man from Wollongong
NewsThe premier English rural choral festival has reached deep into the Australian outback for its next CEO.
David Francis is head of Wollongong Conservatorium of Music. Before that he worked for the BBC Symphony Chorus, CBSO, Arts Council England, Dartington Hall Trust and the PRS Foundation. He migrated to Australia in 2014 to be General Manager of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.
Cheap to hire then, seeing the Festival finances are so dire
Three Choirs has operated in three CITIES for 300 years.
Why the racist headline Norman? What has “Goolagong” got to do with anything? The only Aboriginal word you could think of?
It’s the name of the Conservatory.
Norman, Wollongong is no more deep in the Australian outback than Clacton on Sea is in the English Midlands, and for much the same reason – it’s on the coast.
It’s much bigger than the town of Gooloogong in Central New South Wales ( pop. 295). Neither have any connection with the celebrated Australian tennis player Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who has no connection with the town of Crawley which I believe is somewhere in Essex.
Crawley is in West Sussex, halfway between London and Brighton. I spent most of my youth there. What’s more, I nearly joined the staff of Wollongong University back in 1983. It’s got a very good reputation.
Thank goodness someone else on here knows some Australian geography!
The conservatory is as usual, in the UK, I believe, named after the city.
You’ve both got something wrong! Wollongong is a city of about 300,000 on the spectacular East Coast of Australia. Its name is attributed to the Aboriginal word woolyunga means 5 islands. It is most definitely NOT a racist word. Nor is the city anywhere near The Outback!
The Three Choirs Festival is not rural.
Exactly: it’s based around three massive city centre venues.
Wollongong (pop. ca. 300,000) isn’t rural either. It’s a major port and university city, once dominated by coal, iron and steel, a bit like Middlesborough without the misery. D. H. Lawrence stayed in Thirroul, a seaside town just to the north, in 1922.
He’s going to need the hide of a wallaby in taking on this financially and artistically challenged Fest!
Good luck mate
The Australian outback! Norman, perhaps you should consult a map of Australia. Wollongong is a thriving coastal city south of Sydney. It has a population of approx. 296,000 and its Conservatorium is widely respected.
You can’t have a ‘rural’ festival without willing yokels like Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Howells, Gurney.
Metropolitans may sneer, but we yokels are a proud bunch.