Singer and composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon has been appointed professor of vocal studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the most senior role to be held there by a First Nations person.
Cheetham Fraillon, who is celebrated for bringing First Nations languages to classical music settings, describes herself as “a 21st-century urban woman who is Yorta Yorta by birth, stolen generation by government policy, soprano by diligence, composer by necessity and lesbian by practice”.
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon with a sculpture of herself made by Anna-Wili Highfield in the Conservatorium library.Credit:Flavio Brancaleone
She will lecture and mentor students in vocal and opera studies and composition.
“We celebrate the oldest music practice in the world on this continent,” she said. “Whilst I’m steeped in that Western tradition of composition and repertoire I want to bring the Australian repertoire into the field of view for these students.
“I’m also applying a First Nations lens. The most fundamental part of that is to say to these students that singing on this land is millennia in the making.
“The Gadigal people have sung their knowledge into this country that we’re studying and learning and teaching on. And we can draw that and be the continuation of that song line that began here millennia ago.”
Cheetham Fraillon, who graduated from the Con in 1986, will be the inaugural Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies. Todd was a long-time lecturer in singing at the Con, retiring in 1985.
“Elizabeth Todd was a revered singing teacher when I was a student,” said Cheetham Fraillon. “And many times I sang for her at eisteddfods and really valued her feedback. I’m incredibly honoured to step into a position that bears her name.”
For the past 16 years, Cheetham Fraillon has lived and worked in Melbourne, where she established Short Black Opera, a national company that develops the work of Indigenous singers. In 1997, she wrote White Baptist Abba Fan, an autobiographical musical in which she describes coming to terms with her sexuality and being a member of the stolen generations.
Conservatorium dean Anna Reid said she was delighted to welcome Cheetham Fraillon back.
“We are a classical arts music institution and because they’re western art music forms, it’s also very colonial,” she said. “[Cheetham Fraillon] is already pushing the boundaries and making us jump. She makes us think, why are we playing these things? What purpose now in the 21st century is playing this music? How can we understand that as a cultural item? How can we move forward and interpret that now in the light of being Australians?”
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