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| Mairi Nicolson in the studio.() |
I remember vividly the day I auditioned for the ABC in 1977. It took place in a studio in the bowels of the original ABC Upper Forbes Street complex, built close to Kings Cross in the 1930s. Someone told me it was bomb-proof. Probably a good idea being so close to the lively red-light district!
I was asked to read a variety of scripts from news to a piece of poetry. I then had to read out a list of 30 different names of public figures, from politicians to musicians, and say a few sentences about each. Finally, there were pronunciations of musicians like Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Francis Poulenc.
Amazingly thanks to Mum, who corrected my accent when I was a child, my experiences as the mid-night to dawn presenter at 2MBS-FM and an all-encompassing four-year Diploma of Music course at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where composer Vincent Plush suggested I had a talent for radio, I passed! In February 1978 I started work as a trainee Announcer on 2FC, the forerunner of Radio National!
I put that title with a capital because there were only Announcers on the radio in those days and they were nearly all men. When I joined, the sole woman was the trail-blazing Margaret Throsby who was reading news and presenting on 2BL (now ABC Sydney).
Looking back, I was very lucky to be given a huge range of duties in my first years, all of it 'live' radio! Not all of my early efforts were auspicious, and I remember receiving pink memos from the fruity-voiced Head of Presentation Roland Redshaw to come up and explain myself.
One of my first challenges was to read the NSW rainfall registration and river heights. I was so proud of getting the pronunciation of Gulargambone and Goondiwindi right that I called the rainfall in metres rather than millimetres, flooding the state.
The 'Cross' was a colourful but hazardous place to work at times. When I arrived to read the 6am news bulletin on a Sunday morning I was often accosted outside in the street with the words "How much, love?" as I hastened in the door!
One evening my future in radio looked very bleak after I broke down laughing in the middle of reading a very serious political story on the 6pm news. The regular studio was being upgraded and the engineer and I were in temporary studios with some basic equipment.
In those days we read a 15-minute bulletin and after 10 minutes there'd be an electronic gong and each of the states would read their own local news. Unfortunately that day I was given a set of chimes and when it came time to 'gong' I noticed the stick was out of reach under the desk. I struggled to pick it up as I read valiantly on, noticing that the engineer had disappeared into convulsions of laughter behind the glass which set me off.
As soon as the bulletin was over the studio supervisor marched in. "You're fired!" But minutes later the switchboard lit up with dozens of listeners phoning in to say how they'd laughed "til they'd cried." They'd never had a better peak hour journey home and I lived to broadcast another day.
As you can see below, our 2FC studio equipment was pretty basic: two turn-tables, and a microphone. We had BBC pronunciation guides and the Grove encyclopedia of music. No Google in those days! What was innovative at the time was the wide-range of music I broadcast from the classics to jazz and folk music.
I even read the news on TV in Canberra and co-hosted Behind the News with John Hall. But music was my muse who could not be denied.
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| ABC Classic presenter Mairi Nicolson.() |
In 1982, I progressed to hosting the Breakfast program, and not long after was launched with a glamorous new photo shoot and an article in Cleo magazine on a new show called Evening with Mairi Nicolson, interviewing an eclectic line-up of guests from Yehudi Menuhin, to Ken Russell and Ruth Cracknell with their desert-island discs.
I remember Hazel Hawke and the artist Lloyd Rees showed a wonderful sense of humanity mixed with tenacity and Ken Russell was gloriously eccentric. On those shows I worked with remarkable colleagues like music programmers Felix Hayman and Ivan Lloyd, and patient producer Amanda Cross.
My big break was a new two-hour Saturday morning show called In Tempo, a forerunner of today's Music Show on RN. Finally, I felt I was in the right place, truly able to use my passions for music and research, promoting local Australian musicians and events and interviewing visiting luminaries from Ravi Shankar to Luciano Pavarotti. I've never stopped enjoying finding out what makes a musician tick. Many are much more vulnerable than their astonishing talents reveal. Ordinary people, with extraordinary gifts.
Every six weeks, we took In Tempo on the road, broadcasting 'live' from the Rothbury Estate Winery in NSW's Hunter Valley with the help of the legendary Bob Barnard and his band. With my intrepid producer, Mary-Jo Capps, we graced the Golden Summers exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery, Taronga Zoo, the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House and the Queen Victoria Building, in Victorian dress! We even inaugurated the new Fire Museum in Parramatta.
By the mid-1980s I'd become a regular host of Sydney Symphony Orchestra concerts in the Town Hall and Sydney Opera House, which I'd watched being built when I was a student at the Con.
I also have fond memories of hosting the summer concerts in the Domain with soloists like Roger Woodward playing the Grieg Piano Concerto. I'd been quite a shy teenager but always felt comfortable on stage, no matter how large the audience.
One passion I have that's never dimmed is working closely with musicians and especially young talent. Experiences like the Sydney International Piano Competition, which we broadcast complete and 'live' in the 1980s, brought me into close contact with talent from all over the world. One year had a particularly strong line-up of Russians. We became friends but had to play cat and mouse with their official Soviet Goskoncert minders.
In 1988 I was asked to go to Perth to interview Sir Georg Solti who was making his Australian debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a coast-to-coast tour as part of our big bicentennial celebrations.
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| Mairi Nicolson and Sir Georg Solti.() |
Sitting opposite that Hungarian force of nature, recording our conversation, was as thrilling as watching him conduct Mahler's Ninth on tour. Later our paths crossed again in Manchester when amongst other works he conducted a memorable Death and Transfiguration with the BBC Philharmonic.
In the 1990s personal reasons took me to the UK, 'up north' to Manchester for nearly a decade, where the BBC was moving away from cultured Oxbridge voices to include regional ones, and this colonial girl slipped in under the radar, working on both Radio 4's long-running Women's Hour and Radio 3's Drive program In Tune.
I've always loved French music, so the chance to work as the broadcaster with the BBC Philharmonic and their chief conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier, who excelled in French repertoire, was a dream come true.
I had thrilling experiences touring with the orchestra across the USA, where I'll never forget calling a concert 'live' from the stage of Avery Fisher Hall, seated close to the bass section, feeling like my hair was standing on end as Håkan Hardenberger gave the American premiere of the trumpet concerto by Sir Peter Maxwell Davis.
On another tour in Switzerland, I lost my voice in a live broadcast from Victoria Hall, Geneva, and had to opt for a sexy whisper.
Presenting many BBC Proms from the Royal Albert Hall were highlights too, especially introducing old friends like the Australian Youth Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra on tour.
Melbourne has been home for more than two decades now, and I can't keep up with the amount and variety of great music on offer and the non-stop opportunities to host some of it.
The opportunities to work regularly in the beautiful Melbourne Recital Centre, hosting the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and recording an interview with Dame Elisabeth Murdoch at Cruden Farm, stand out in my memory today. I have loved working with rising stars at ANAM and developing close relationships with the MSO musicians and conductors Markus Stenz, Sir Andrew Davis and now Jaime Martín and interview legendary artists. Touring twice to Europe with the orchestra as their broadcaster, was the icing on the cake.
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| Mairi Nicolson and Bryn Terfel. |
Hosting a recent MSO Myer Music Bowl concert with an audience of 11,000 Melbournians hanging on every note of Orff's Carmina Burana in rapt silence, I was reminded again of how precious this human-to-human form of communication is and how much we missed it during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
I think it's the honesty of live music-making that I love. The fact that each interpretation is unique. As a broadcaster working on stage, back-stage, interviewing marvellous musicians, the buzz is always there.
Longevity in the business has meant I've been able to watch fledgling Australian ensembles become world-class and talented youngsters I knew back in the 80s go overseas themselves, and return home to add lustre to the vibrant scene we enjoy today.
Thanks to Julie Copeland I worked for a period on RN as host of the Sunday Arts show, and explored a wide range of music and poetry on the late night programs Melisma and Nocturne. Again in Melbourne I am blessed with hugely supportive and generous colleagues like producers Duncan Yardley, Jennifer Mills and Melissa May. You hear the magic that comes out of your radio every day and it's thanks to the many dedicated and talented sound engineers I've been fortunate to work with.
On radio in Melbourne, I've been lucky to host The Opera Show for 14 years, programmed by the sparkling Warner Whiteford, sharing a passion ignited by my dear Mum when I was a child, and Legends where I learn so much about life from these phenomenally talented musicians.
45 years on, I'm grateful for the countless opportunities both the ABC and BBC have given me to share my passion for music and musicians with audiences on both sides of the globe. It's exceeded anything I ever expected.
When that red light goes on, whether at the side of the stage or in the radio studio, and the first piece of music begins to play, some special chemistry ignites inside me, a feeling of joy I still have to this day.
First published at ABC website, February 24, 2023
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