Antoni Bonetti AM, founder of Brisbane Symphony Orchestra and co-founder of Noosa Orchestra, first picked up his dad’s violin when he was four and music has been his life’s passion since.
It has opened doors for him to play and conduct in Australia, Europe, the U.S. and New Zealand and in Tuesday’s Australia Day Awards his dedication and skills were recognised when he received the Member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to the performing arts as an orchestral conductor and musical director.”
Antoni says he spends half of his life in Noosa and the other half in Brisbane and is the senior string teacher at Good Shepherd Lutheran College in Noosaville. He is also the head of strings at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls School in Brisbane.
Antoni’s parents, both New Zealanders, were working and studying in London when he was born in 1952. “Dad played the violin and my mother was a singer and a pianist. I think I was six months old when they went back to Wellington and eight years later they moved to Sydney.
“I followed in my father’s footsteps as a violinist and I was also blessed to be educated at the Conservatorium High School, which at that time was attached to the Conservatorium of Music, by musicians like Sir Bernard Heinze.”
It was through music that Antoni met his clarinettist and author wife, Ruth. “We were both at the National Youth Orchestra camp near Adelaide and we married in 1974,” he told Noosa Today.
“We decided to go overseas for three years but we stayed seven, playing and teaching in Europe. I was picked up by a number of orchestras to play with them and it was there that my love of conducting was sparked.”
In 1981 they came back to Australia to Brisbane and Antoni took up the position of concertmaster of the Queensland Theatre Orchestra and in the years that followed he taught music at St Peters Lutheran College.
“Later I had a good connection with the Good Shepherd Lutheran College in Noosa and I was invited to go and teach there.”
In 1990 he founded the Brisbane Symphony because he felt there were “talented local musicians who deserved a chance to be challenged and to play exciting material.
“Ruth and I had a bit of a joke. She had the baby and I had the orchestra.”
Nearly eleven years ago this year Antoni helped form the Noosa Orchestra at the suggestion of Good Shepherd director of music, Heidi Woodruff, and music teacher, Silvi Eckley. Today the orchestra is a noted addition to the arts on the Sunshine Coast.
Noosa had a spectacular introduction to both orchestras five years ago when Antoni conducted them on stage in the Ludwig Sphor Double Symphony for Two Orchestras at the Leisure Centre as part of Noosa Longweekend.
And Noosa will see Antoni and the orchestra in action this year when Good Shepherd school presents the hit musical “Wicked” at the J in June. “It will be really quite electric,” he said.
Asked what was the most challenging aspect of being a conductor, he said, “You can’t stand in front of an orchestra or a choir with your head in the score. You have to have the score in your head..
“It allows you to be ahead of the rest of the ensemble. No musician, whether community or professional is happy while the conductor is bumbling along. You have to support them and to be with them all the time.”
And the most satisfying? “I’m more interested in how the players feel–if it was a great experience for them, if they feel good about it.”
And does he have a favourite work? “Definitely Beethoven’s Seventh. When I was a kid, I used to crank up my father’s record player and play it all the time. It blew me away … and still does.”
