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Acclaimed both for its high standards of artistry and professionalism, the Melbourne-based Team of Pianists has captivated audiences in Australia and overseas for nearly twenty years. Coupled with unquestioned commitment to the highest artistic performance standards in its many solo and chamber recitals, concerto performances , CDs, and broadcasts, the Team is equally committed to promoting young musicians through its many masterclass programmes in metropolitan and regional areas alike. The Team has produced nine CDs covering wide range of music including a number of exciting, yet rarely recorded works, as well as two innovative videos and various publications on the art of piano playing and musicianship. The members of the Team are Artists-In-Residence for the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) at Glenfern, the National Trust's Centre for the Arts and Culture. Here the Team has recently established the Glenfern Piano Institute which has developed innovative programmes including the Spring Piano School for Primary and Secondary school age students, Weekend Retreats for Adult Piano Students, as well as masterclasses by Australian and overseas artists.
For many years, Max Cooke has been a leading figure in music performance and education, and he has taught some very talented students some of whom are Professors of Music in Germany, Scotland and in Australia. His own performances have brought him together with famous musicians and conductors.

Max Cooke studied at the University of Melbourne, specialising in Music at the University Conservatorium and languages in the Arts Faculty. He then proceeded to Europe where he studied piano at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, under the great concert pianist Alfred Cortot, and he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

In 1951 he was invited by Professor Heinze to return to the Conservatorium as a member of staff. Max Cooke has remained on the staff of the University of Melbourne ever since. He started as Chief Study Teacher, was then Senior Lecturer and later Associate Professor (Reader), and he was for six years until 1981 Dean of the Faculty and Chairman of the Department of Music. He is a Professor at Monash University, and he teaches also at the Victorian College of the Arts.

His career is involved with performance and teaching, and he has produced a number of publications on music and on piano teaching, including one on Japanese Music Teaching Methods in Australia, and two on his work with musically gifted children. His publications titled TONE, TOUCH AND TECHNIQUE, together with CDs and videos that accompany them, have been used extensively by piano teachers and students. They combine wide pianistic knowledge and experience with very considerable investigation and research into the physics and physiology of piano performance. He has lectured on these publications in Europe and England as well as in Australia.

Max Cooke has been president of the Victorian Music Teachers Association, National President of the Australian Society for Music Education, and Chairman of the Commission on the Education of the Professional Musician within the International Society for Music Education (ISME).

In the field of performance, Max Cooke has played many times as soloist with orchestras, giving over sixty concerto presentations, and he has been regularly involved with chamber music and accompanying, playing both piano and harpsichord. He has worked with many local and overseas musicians, and has spent a considerable time in Europe, particularly in Germany. He has been an adjudicator on the panel of the Busoni International Piano
Competition in Bolzano (Italy).

With the TEAM OF PIANISTS which he directs, he has given and organised many recitals, has produced seven CDs and two videos, and he conducts broadcasts on radio 3 MBS FM. One of the Team¹s successful annual events is a series of recitals titled TWILIGHT CHAMBER MUSIC AT RIPPON LEA, involving the TEAM OF PIANISTS with leading musicians from Australia and overseas.

In 1988 Max Cooke was invited to become a Fellow of the Australian College of Education. In the Queen¹s birthday honours lists of1998, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to music and to education, particularly to piano pedagogy and the training of students. In 2001, Max Cooke received the 'Bundesverdienstkreuz' from the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Johannes Rau. This makes him an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic.


Robert Chamberlain is a versatile and accomplished pianist, with interests ranging from period performance to contemporary music and with specialisations including chamber and ensemble music of all kinds. He studied for Bachelors and Masters degrees in Australia under Max Cooke, in Vienna as a winner of the Apex/Robert Stolz Scholarship, and also at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, where he worked with many distinguished international artists, such as John Perry, Peter Donohoe, Janos Starker and Lorand Fenyves.

He is a partner in the Melbourne based Team of Pianists, Artists in Residence for the National Trust of Australia (Vic) based at the historic mansion Glenfern. (see www.teamofpianists.com.au)

His concert engagements in recent years have included piano and violin duo engagements in Turkey, Malaysia and Australia, period instrument collaborations on the music of Brahms with clarinettist Craig Hill, most recently at the 2005 Barossa Music Festival, numerous contemporary music projects including recordings, performances and an Australia Council funded mentorship with the contemporary music ensemble re-sound, as well as many chamber and solo recitals, recordings and radio broadcasts.

From 2000 to 2003 Robert performed with violinist Isin Cakmakçioglu and cellist Rachel Atkinson as Trio Erytheia presenting the Australian premieres of works by Peteris Vasks, Sidika Özdil, Andrián Pertout, Andrew Blyth, Astor Piazolla as well as mainstream and contemporary piano trio repertoire in innovative broadcasts and concerts. In recent years he has collaborated with chamber groups including the Hamer String Quartet and members of the Flinders Quartet, in piano quartet and piano quintet repertoire, with instrumentalists such as flautist Megan Sterling (Hong Kong Philharmonic), saxophonist Jason Xanthoudakis, clarinettists David Griffiths and Phillip Miechel, and with vocalists such as sopranos Emily Xiao Wang and Michelle Marie Cook.

Robert has recorded on some 15 CD’s for a number of labels including Tall Poppies, Naxos (his recording with Len Vorster of Holst’s Music for two Pianos was one of a number of discs selected for Gramophone Editors Choice Award in 1999), Move Records and VoxAustralis.

As a scholar Robert has edited, with violinist Marina Marsden (Sydney Symphony Orchestra), a critical edition of Australian composer Margaret Sutherland’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (Currency Press, 2000), which they also recorded on the Tall Poppies label.

Robert is a distinguished teacher, for many years on the sessional staff at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Music, but now at the School of Music - Conservatorium, at Monash University. He also teaches children of all ages, as well as adults and has been instrumental in developing the Team of Pianists’ annual Spring Piano School for talented school age pianists, which he directs each year, and the annual Weekend Retreat for Adult Piano Students.

He has adjudicated around Australia, for the Australian National Piano Award in Shepparton, for Eisteddfods and competitions in Albury, Ballarat, Wollongong and Melbourne. He gives masterclasses and workshops in Universities and music schools on a wider range of topics, focusing in particular on teaching and learning processes, and on style and technique in piano performance.

EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS

“Chamberlain performed American composer Donald Freund’s Feux d’artifice Tombeau, a searing lament commemorating the Challenger disaster of 1986. Despite its sectional nature, this ballad speaks clearly of a fierce loss and a hard-achieved state of reconciliation in a thunderously contemporary language, the whole conveyed by Chamberlain with high virtuosity and ardent responsiveness” The Age, January 30. 2006

“Chamberlain and Coote also combined for Rachmaninov’s Suite no. 2 for two pianos, demonstrating excellent dialogue as the melody bounced between primo and secondo piano. The third movement showed fine senstitivity, with Chamberlain especially drawing out the emotion in the work” The Australian, September 22, 2005.

“..such was Hill’s gentle eloquence that these performances offered new insight into these works. [Brahms sonatas for clarinet and piano]Robert Chamberlain’s equally eloquent playing on a newly restored 1870’s Blüthner grand piano proved the ideal accompaniment” The Australian, May 19, 2005.

“Pianist Robert Chamberlain produce some of the most memorable sounds of the day from a magnificent Hornung 1870 square piano in three of Schumanns simply crafted but poignantly felt Albumblätter Op. 99. The Adelaide Adverstiser, May 18, 2005.

“The following Beethoven D major Sonata Op. 28 was one of the evening’s major works. The pianist generated a mobile character for this summery optimistic piece, aiming for calm and restraint, even if the powerful surges of the opening and middle two movements came across without dynamic compromise. … the Etude -Tableaua in E flat from Op. 39 set by Rachmaninoff came closest to deluging the listener with its force. “ The Age, February 3, 2004.

“…Trio Erytheia – Isin Cakmakcioglu (violin), Rachel Atkinson (cello) and Robert Chamberlain (piano) - handled the tight sight lines to give a committed performance of very diverse music. This ensemble is making a name for itself in the new-music field. At last, Melbourne has a group that maintains a focus in that specialised area rather than instrumentalists coming together for a concert and then dispersing” The Age, October 28, 2003.

“A beautifully played and recorded recital of music old and new for violin and piano from Australia's Tall Poppies imprint.” “Marsden and Chamberlain's performance here is pretty much ideal”. (Grieg Violin Sonata in F major, Nielsen violin Sonata no. 1 Neil Horner, a UK website review, October 2003 (http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2003/Oct03/marsden.htm)

“Full house audience for top Aussie musicians” “The duos masterful interpretation of the dramatic sonata....The audience was captivated by the dreamlike ambience....It was pure heaven, a night to remember for all who came” New Sabah Times (Malaysia), May 2000, review of recital by Isin Cakmakcioglu, violin, & Robert Chamberlain, piano.

“...allowing Mr Chamberlain to bring his commanding technique and vision to the service of truly great music. This was compelling playing, delivering a kaleidoscope of original ideas with the full range of power, control and subtlety required.”
The Border Mail (Albury NSW) September 1999

One of few Australian-based pianists who has sustained a long-term performing career independent of a major teaching position, Darryl Coote is highly esteemed for the depth of his musicianship and fine technique. He is a partner of the TEAM OF PIANISTS, Artists-in-Residence at the National Trust (Victoria). He pursues an active career as a solo pianist, chamber musician, concerto soloist, teacher and adjudicator. He studied piano with Max Cooke at the University of Melbourne, where he completed his studies for Bachelor of Music with Honours and subsequently Master of Music. He also studied with Kurt Bauer at the Musikhochschule, Hanover. He has been the recipient of a number of prizes and awards, including the Allans Award, the national Hephzibah Menuhin Memorial Scholarship, a Queen Elizabeth Award and was Victorian State winner of the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition.

Darryl has appeared in concert in many parts of Australia, including: Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Hobart, Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane, Toowoomba and the Gold Coast, as well as many of Victoria's metropolitan and regional venues. His concerto appearances include performances with the Melbourne Symphony's Town Hall series, the Arcata Orchestra of Stuttgart, the Victorian College of the Arts Symphony Orchestra and the New Monash Orchestra. During the past twelve years, he has presented programmes in the highly-acclaimed series TWILIGHT CHAMBER MUSIC AT RIPPON LEA. As an all-round ensemble performer, he often performs piano duets with Max Cooke, as well as major two-piano works with Robert Chamberlain. He is a sought-after chamber musician and accomanpanist, having worked with artists such as Anne Gilby (oboe), David Thomas (clarinet), Sally Anne Russell (mezzo soprano), Kathleen Southall-Casey (soprano), Dana Zeimer (soprano), Kristy Conrau (cello), Judith Hickel (violin), Charles Castleman (violin), Miwako Abe (violin) and Brian Hansford (baritone). He has undertaken a number of overseas tours, having performed in several German cities, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. In 2003 he toured the eastern states of Australia, as associate artist to acclaimed violinist Charles Castleman (Eastman School of Music, USA), and he partnered Charles Castleman again in 2005, performing sonatas by Debussy and Prokofiev, amongst other works. He has performed for the ACT Lieder Society and on the Mornington Peninsula together with noted mezzo-soprano, Sally-Anne Russell, an artist with whom he has collaborated for several years.

Darryl has recorded and broadcast extensively on Australian radio networks, including ABC Classic FM and 3MBS FM. He features on all nine CDs produced by the TEAM OF PIANISTS, having recorded Bruch's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra with Robert Chamberlain and the New Monash Orchestra conducted by André de Quadros. He is an experienced teacher, examiner and adjudicator, and is a member of the sessional piano staff at Monash University, as well as a council member of the Victorian Music Teachers' Association. In 2005 he adjudicated the senior piano sections at the Adelaide Eisteddfod, as well as all the piano sections at the Australian National Eisteddfod in Canberra. Recently he returned to Canberra to give a series of lectures for the Canberra Branch of the NSW Music Teachers' Association. Together with Max Cooke, he is one of the co-founders and an adjudicator of the Australian National Piano Award Shepparton, and he was secretary of the Organising Committee for the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference (Melbourne, July 2003). He is a member of the Australian German Association, having performed for that association early in 2005 together with clarinettist Phillip Miechel and with soprano Merlyn Quaife.


Rohan completed the Master of Music Performance degree at the Victorian College of the Arts with First Class Honours. He is a member of the Golden Key Honour Society, and was a grand finalist and prize-winner at the 2000 Australian Piano Award. Rohan has performed as soloist with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, the Victorian Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne University Choral Society, Monash Sinfonia and the New Monash Orchestra and has been the recipient of a number of awards and prizes. At the end of his Masters studies in 2002, he received an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship to undertake a PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts, and subsequently became the VCA's first PhD candidate. He has performed in the Rigg Estate Recital Series, the National Trust's Twilight Concert Series at Rippon Lea, Labassa and Como as well as being frequent performer in the Melbourne International Festival over recent years. Rohan has also performed in Europe and Asia. He is a partner in the Team of Pianists and his performances have been the subject of broadcasts on ABC Classic FM as well as on the Team of Pianists' most recent CD release, 'Schimmel Artists' Series'.