Music Centre People


	Garth Mansfield OAM Hon FGCM Director of the Wesley Music Centre since it began in 2002 and was Director of Music of Wesley Uniting Church from 1978 to 2008. He has also been Secretary of the Wesley Music Foundation (ACT) since its inception in 1999. He was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 1994 for services to church music. In October 2010 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship Diploma of The Guild of Church Musicians, an international and interdenominational body, “in recognition of the outstanding work done serving as Director of Music and Organist at Wesley Uniting Church in Canberra, in the setting up of the Wesley Music Centre and in the fostering of students of church music and promoting scholarships at the Centre leading to the furtherance of the goals of excellence in the ministry of music in the church”. This was the first award initiated from Australia. He was formerly organist at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Forrest, ACT from 1957 to 1978 and choir conductor there from 1968 to 1978. Garth studied organ privately with Dr. George Faunce Allman at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from the age of 11. He attended Westminster Choir College, Princeton, USA in 1983 to study choral singing and church music.
	Keyboardist Dr Calvin Bowman has premièred major works by composers including Philip Glass and Ross Edwards. His ‘Bach Marathon’ for the 2009 Melbourne Festival, for which he performed the complete Bach organ works in a single seventeen hour sitting, was nominated for a Helpmann Award, whilst his song Now Touch the Air Softly, recorded by Emma Matthews with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo for Deutsche Grammophon, was nominated for ‘Best New Composition’ in the 2009 Limelight Awards. Sir Neville Marriner has described his songs as ‘absolute gems of twenty-first century imagination’. Dr Bowman’s awards include an Australia Council Fellowship and a Fulbright scholarship, and he was the first Australian to graduate with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale University. Dr Bowman is a part-time Senior Lecturer and University Organist at the ANU School of Music, Director of Music at Wesley Uniting Church and Artistic Director for the Wesley Music Foundation and Wesley Music Centre (also part-time). He will teach in the Foundation’s ACT Organ School and will perform professionally at the Centre and Wesley Uniting Church. More here. Download the Media Release on his arrival here.
	Philip Swanton (Organ) DSCM, Diplom fur alte Musik Basel Philip Swanton trained under David Rumsey at Sydney Conservatorium of Music before pursuing postgraduate studies in historical keyboard instruments in Basel, Switzerland with Jean-Claude Zehnder at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He has enjoyed an immensely successful career as a performer, recording artist and teacher in both hemispheres. Numerous concert appearances at major festivals and venues have taken him throughout Europe, across Australia and as far afield as Mexico. He has produced solo recordings for a number of leading European radio networks and recording labels (Motette, Pelca, Koch-Schwann), presented masterclasses and workshops for music institutions and summer academies throughout Europe, edited keyboard music for the publishing house, Carus, of Stuttgart and published articles in a number of journals. Philip returned to Australia in 1992 after living and working in Europe for 16 years. In addition to lecturing at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, he is on the music staff of Sydney Grammar School, is Senior Teacher in Organ at the ACT Organ School (Canberra) and is in frequent demand as an organ recitalist around Australia. His other great musical passion is the fortepiano. In a series of nine recitals between 1998 and 2000, he became the first Australian ever to publicly perform the complete keyboard sonatas of Joseph Haydn on harpsichord and fortepiano. On his most recent CD,“Just for Pleasure” (Walsingham Classics), Philip directs the period-instrument ensemble Camerata Classica in a world-première recording of Six Fortepiano Trios (Op.13) by the 18th century German composer, Johann August Just.
	Becky Blair - Executive Officer Becky has an Arts Degree from Boston University, and has undertaken courses in sales and marketing, travel bookings, airline computer systems and Microsoft Office systems. She had many years experience in group and corporate travel, airline sales and marketing. For six and a half years Becky worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Broken Hill as their Visitor Centre Supervisor. This involved the management of staff, the museum, a shop, tours, public relations, donations and mail orders.