Susan Melville

Born 1951 in Christchurch, Susan has had extensive performing and teaching experience in Australasia, the UK and Europe, and accompanied some of NZ's finest musicians, e.g., Deborah Rawson, Patrick Power, Roger Wilson, Jonathan Lemalu, Mark Menzies, Rhonda Browne, and Keith Lewis. She warmly acknowledges her early teachers - piano: Caroline Lill, Ernest Empson, Maurice Till; violin/viola: Lois Bognuda, Beth Rogers, Louis Yffer; theory: Thora Lewin - and orchestral and trainee violin teacher programmes at CSIM, achieving LRSM in Piano Performance while at Burnside High School, where Vic Ellena inspired a love of singing.

Working with music students under the Czech Quartet at Canterbury University during her BSc (Zoology) studies, and playing in the National Youth and Christchurch Civic orchestras, confirmed a passion for ensemble work. Then came a diploma from Sydney Teachers College, general primary teaching, music studies in England and Switzerland, further collaboration with instrumentalists and singers, and interest in composition, conducting, and choral work.

From 1987 back in Aotearoa, and at first busy with a young family, work has been based mostly in Hawke's Bay, including roles of chorus mistress, assistant musical director, and salon opera pianist for Opera Hawke's Bay.

Susan is an associate of the IRMT(NZ) and has loved working with young people: as chamber music coach, EIT Vocal Performance tutor, itinerant piano and violin teacher, director of Havelock North High's large choral programme, faculty member of Singing School NZ, and conductor of the Hawke's Bay Youth Orchestra, receiving a civic award in 2017 for services to education and youth. A feature of her time with the HBYO (1995-2021) was combining with other young orchestras, e.g., the regular regional youth orchestra festivals with Michael Vinten and the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta and Manawatu YO, hosting a visit from the Long Island YO, and the HBYO's visit to China in 2016.

Susan has adjudicated widely in NZ, had original compositions performed at The Big Sing, the Westpac schools chamber music finals, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and as incidental music to plays, and has long experience as an arranger - especially of choral pieces, and for a regional youth orchestra's often-unusual combination of instruments.

Now partly retired and living in Canterbury, there's more time to enjoy grandchildren, and more time for composition.