Away from the challenges the world is facing during this pandemic, we are also living through another one of the greatest of scientific endeavours – that is - the attempt to understand the most complex object in the universe, the brain. Researchers are devoting massive amounts of time and energy to exploring what brains do and new technology is enabling them to both describe and manipulate that activity. It came as a surprise to discover that here in Germany, one of the country’s leading neuroscientists is Sydney-born Matthew Larkum, who heads the Larkum Laboratory at Humboldt University, Berlin. He joins Breandáin O’Shea on this episode of Tall Poppies: The Podcast.

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Matthew Larkum, Neuroscientist

Stanley Dodds grew up in Adelaide and has been a violinist with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra since the early 90s. He is also a conductor and frequently directs ensembles of the Berlin Philharmonic and in 2014 was appointed Principal Conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He is dedicated to working with youth and amateur orchestras and is in charge of the Berlin Philharmonic Schools Orchestra Concert and Youth Composition Workshop. Stan Dodds is also a member of the Berlin Philharmonic executive board.

Stanley Dodds - Violinist and Conductor

Gail Jones one of Australia's most celebrated writers who has a special place in her heart for Berlin. At home, her work has received several major accolades including the 2019 Australian Prime Minister's prize for literature, while abroad Gail's fiction has been translated into fifteen languages and long-listed for esteemed prizes, such as the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

Gail Jones, Author

Introducing Series II of Tall Poppies the Podcast, commencing in 2020 

Tall Poppies, The Podcast Trailer December 2019

Not many opera singers could match the achievements of the Australian soprano, Joan Sutherland. Her brilliant career stretched over four decades and the legendary singer was celebrated in opera houses and concert halls around the world. Yet, despite her worldwide fame and the many international honours she received during her lifetime, Joan Sutherland remained unaffected by it all.Breandáin met Dame Joan in 2000, during the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Belgium, and recorded this interview.

Tall Poppies Postcard: Remembering Joan Sutherland (1926 -2010)

In this podcast, the extraordinary jazz trombonist Shannon Barnett joins Breandáin to talk about her phenomenal career in music, the challenges she continues to face as a female musician and about the inspiration she finds through teaching the next generation of musicians.

Tall Poppies with Shannon Barnett, Jazz Trombonist

Adam Elliot’s films have been featured at hundreds of festivals and have received numerous awards, including an Academy Award for his film, “Harvie Krumpet”. Adam calls his films “Clayographies,” and by that, he means clay-animated biographies.Their themes are bittersweet and often venture into domains that many filmmakers might normally shy away from. While being hilarious and poignant, they explore friendship, autism, taxidermy, obesity, kleptomania, religious differences and mental illness.This podcast features one of Breandáin’s interviews with Academy Award-winner Adam Elliot from 2009.

Tall Poppies Postcard with Adam Elliot, Animation writer, Director and Producer

Tall Poppies Postcard with Poet Robert Gray Over the next few weeks, “Tall Poppies: The Podcast,” will feature a series of 10 minute excerpts from archived interviews with renowned Australians. We are calling these, Tall Poppies Postcards.The first features the Australian poet, Robert Gray, an outstanding landscape poet and alongside Les Murray, has been one of the most significant Australian poets of the last decades. Indeed, the late Les Murray said of Robert Gray, “ He has a remarkable eye, and the verbal felicity, which must accompany such an eye.”Robert has also edited various poetry anthologies and the journals of the painter, John Olsen.Robert has been awarded many of the most-respected Australian literary prizes, including the New South Wales Premier’s Poetry Award, the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry and the Patrick White Award. Many of his poems have been translated into German.

Tall Poppies Postcard with Robert Gray, Poet

In this episode Breandáin O'Shea meets the Sydney-born painter Heather Betts, who has been living in Berlin, since 1984. She is a graduate of Sydney’s Fine Arts Institute, she also studied viola at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Heather moved to Berlin with her husband musician, Brett Dean. Heather has had over forty solo exhibitions, as well as numerous group exhibitions. The influence of her viola studies is omnipresent, as music is a leitmotif of much of her work. Heather talked about those early days in Berlin, when the German capital was still divided by the Berlin Wall. And about a special friendship she shared with Rosie, a prima ballerina from East Berlin that led eventually to her assisting Rosie and her family to escape the Communist regime.

Tall Poppies with Heather Betts, Painter

Soprano Siobhan Stagg studied at Melbourne University and later at the Wales International Academy of Voice in Cardiff. Her many accolades include first prize at the 2014 International Mozart Competition. She is a member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and frequently been a guest at many other opera houses, including London’s Royal Opera House, the Dutch National Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. On the concert platform, Siobhan has appeared as a soloist at events the likes of the Salzburg Mozartwoche and the BBC Proms, as well as with prestigious ensembles the calibre of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Tall Poppies with Siobhan Stagg, Singer

Cathy Milliken has been an artist many young Australian musicians have looked up to when they have travelled abroad to continue their studies in Europe. A renowned oboist, composer and music educator, Cathy has held key positions with two of the world’s leading music ensembles, Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Breandáin caught up with Cathy in Berlin, where she talked about her illustrious musical career, working alongside many of the world’s leading musicians, composing and creating participatory compositional projects around the world. And about how it all started back in the Queensland Youth Orchestra.

Tall Poppies with Cathy Milliken, Musician

Breandáin caught up with the renowned Melburnian, Peter Singer, in Berlin at the presentation of the 3rd annual “Peter Singer Award,” an accolade given to those working on strategies to relieve the suffering of animals.Much of Peter Singer’s career has been devoted to social and political causes, most notably animal rights, but also famine and poverty relief, environmentalism and reproductive rights.But perhaps he is best known for his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. Its publication greatly contributed to the growth of the animal rights movement by calling attention to the routine torture and abuse of countless animals in factory farms and in the course of scientific research. At the same time, it generated significant new interest among ethical philosophers in the moral treatment of non-human animals.

Tall Poppies with Peter Singer, Philosopher

In this edition of Tall Poppies, Paul Kildea talks about his latest book, "Chopin's Piano, A Journey Through Romanticism," and rising to the challenge of finding the right words to describe music. He also recalls the time in his life when the adjective – Australian - was not a positive one and shares his insatiable passion for Australia.“I have always tried to work out a way of coming up with a single image or analogy or a metaphor, that makes it really clear to a non-specialist, the phenomenon of hearing that piece of music”The conductor and author, Paul Kildea, hails from Canberra. He studied piano and musicology at the University of Melbourne before completing his doctorate at Oxford. Since his Opera Australia début in 1997, he has conducted many of today’s great artists in opera houses and concert halls throughout Europe and Australia.In 1999 he was appointed Head of Music at the Aldeburgh Festival and, in 2003, was named Artistic Director of one of London’s most prestigious concert venues, Wigmore Hall.Paul has also written extensively on music and culture in the twentieth century. His first three books feature the music and work of the composer, Benjamin Britten. The third, a biography, “Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century”, was published in 2013, the composer’s centenary year. The Financial Times considered it, ‘unquestionably the music book of the year’.Paul’s latest book, “Chopin’s Piano, A Journey through Romanticism,” has just been published. It tells the captivating story of Frédéric Chopin and the fate of his Majorcan pianino, the instrument he used while residing on Majorca, where he wrote a number of his renowned “24 Preludes”. It traces musical Romanticism from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Among its protagonists are Chopin and the French novelist, George Sand, while the unexpected heroine of this book is the great keyboard player, Wanda Landowska, who rescued Chopin’s pianino in 1913.At the heart of this book’s 24 chapters, are Chopin’s 24 Preludes. It traces the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them, and the traditions they came to represent.But it all begins and ends with the Majorcan pianino, which became a much-coveted cultural artefact during the Second World War. When the Nazis saw it as a symbol of the man and music, they were determined to appropriate it as their own.

Tall Poppies with Paul Kildea, Conductor and Author

The Tall Poppies podcast this week features dancer and choreographer, Rhys Martin, who hails from Newcastle, New South Wales. A graduate of Sydney University, Rhys initially studied literature and fine arts. He began his career in the theatre with Sydney’s pioneering underground company, “One Extra Dance.” In this Tall Poppies’ episode, Rhys recalls his encounters in the 1970s with many of the leading figures of the Australian dance scene before travelling to work in Britain and, subsequently, Germany. Rhys Martin is currently Professor of Dance and Choreography at Berlin’s University of the Arts, where he has established the new "Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin” (HZT) and leads an MA course entitled “Solo/Dance/Authorship”.http://tall-poppies.com/podcast/dance/9-rhys-martin-dancer-and-choreographer/

Tall Poppies with Rhys Martin, Dancer, Choreographer & Educator

In this episode, Kat Frankie tells Breandáin about how an idea becomes a wide-ranging musical composition and how she enjoys the creative process a little more than performing. We also sample a little of Kat's latest album, "Bad Behaviour". Find out more at http://tall-poppies.com/

Tall Poppies with Kat Frankie, Singer-Songwriter_ Short Edition

Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson. That Hollywood spotlight ensures that most of us know the name of these celebrity Aussies, but what about those many other Australians who have forged impressive careers around the globe? Artists, academics, sportsmen and women, scientists and no doubt many, many more professions. People like the Melbournian Barrie Kosky, who is today one of the world’s most-celebrated opera directors, conductor Simone Young, who directs international orchestras and Sydney-born singer-songwriter Kat Frankie, a popular performer at top music venues all over Germany. As a journalist working internationally for decades, I’m constantly amazed at the number of Australians – high profile or otherwise – living outside Australia – who have remarkable careers and what’s more, remarkable stories to tell. In Tall Poppies I’ll be sitting down with one of these inspiring Aussies each episode to chat about their work, living abroad and their passage to international success. Of course we will also look at how growing up in Australia influenced them in the past and even today in their work. In the first series of Tall Poppies we’ll meet some of the exceptional Australians who have made Germany their home. And just so you get the complete picture of these impressive individuals, some podcasts feature music and readings as well.

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Tall Poppies

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