30 Years of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra

DARWIN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) celebrates a very special milestone this month – we caught up with Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Jonathan Tooby for a chat.

What does this milestone mean to the DSO family?

30 years for DSO is a huge milestone! It was started in 1989 by Dr. Martin Jarvis and it has grown steadily since then to be what it is today. There are a quite a few players in the orchestra that have been here from the beginning that may be more suited to answer this question, but what I do know is that this orchestra has reached many people here, across the Territory and our gala concert is a celebration of that.

It’s also a celebration of the incredible commitment of the playing body of DSO who do this voluntarily. From here, the plan is only to go higher and to reach more people, further afield.

Celebrated Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth will premiere a new work commissioned especially for the event – why was this important?

It’s always important for arts organisations to commission new work so that the evolution of the art form continues, and specifically in this case, it also marks the beginning of a new exciting direction and period of growth. 

I feel we have an incredible opportunity to combine the rich symphonic orchestral soundscape with the incredible and deeply profound traditional music of the Territory. It is not only that we are creating new and amazing work which is fabulous in itself, but it is a way to bring us all together with the one language that we all love and share – music!

After the concert, how do you and the DSO family plan to celebrate?

After each performance the orchestra always celebrates with  a function. I think the gala concert coming up will be a very special celebration in itself, marking 30 years of this very wonderful orchestra.

We’re all excited!

Sat 24 Aug | 7.30pm | Darwin Convetion Centre | $30-$60 | darwinfestival.org.au | dso.org.au