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 of 1998, 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.

A partner in the Melbourne based Team of Pianists, Artists in Residence for the National Trust of Australia (Vic), he has developed and directs the Team’s annual Spring Piano School for talented school age pianists, as well as the Weekend Retreat for Adult Piano Students.

His concert engagements in recent years have included performances in Turkey, Malaysia and Thailand, at the 2005 Barossa Music Festival in period instrument collaborations on the music of Brahms with clarinettist Craig Hill, 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. In July 2008 he gave recitals, workshops and masterclasses in Bangkok for the Thailand Music Educators Association and in Kuala Lumpur for The Talent Makers music school.

For four years he perfomed in the piano trio, 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. He has collaborated with other 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 and Lousie Page.

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 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.

"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

"Accompanied here by the first-class pianist Robert Chamberlain..."
Bremer Magazine (Germany) February 1996

"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)

"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.

One of few Australian-based pianists who have 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 of Australia (Victoria) http://www.teamofpianists.com.au. He pursues an active career as a solo pianist, chamber musician, concerto soloist, teacher and adjudicator. He studied piano privately for many years with Rennie Sullivan, then with Max Cooke at the University of Melbourne, where he completed the degree of Bachelor of Music with Honours and subsequently, Master of Music. He studied also with Kurt Bauer at the Musikhochschule, Hanover (Germany). 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 he was Victorian State winner of the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition (now Young Performers' Awards).

Darryl has appeared in concert in many parts of Australia, including: Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Hobart, Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane, Toowoomba, NSW South Coast 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 fifteen years, he has given many performances in the highly-acclaimed series TWILIGHT CHAMBER MUSIC AT RIPPON LEA. 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 accompanist, having worked with artists such as Anne Gilby (oboe), Phillip Miechel (clarinet), Ian Morgan (clarinet), David Thomas (clarinet), Sally-Anne Russell (mezzo soprano), Merlyn Quaife (soprano), Kathleen Southall-Casey (soprano), Dana Zeimer (soprano), Kristy Conrau (cello), Josephine Vains (cello), Rohan de Korte (cello), Judith Hickel (violin), Charles Castleman (violin), Miwako Abe (violin), Robert Macindoe (violin), Brian Hansford (baritone) and Michael Leighton Jones (baritone). In 2007 he and cellist Josephine Vains gave a series of recitals in Geelong, Melbourne and Canberra. He has undertaken a number of overseas tours, having performed in several German cities, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Shenzhen, Foshan, Nanjing, Hong Kong, as well as in Rochester, USA. In 2003 he toured the eastern states of Australia, as associate artist to famed American violinist Charles Castleman (Eastman School of Music, Rochester), and he partnered Charles Castleman again in 2005, performing sonatas by Debussy and Prokofiev, amongst other works. Together with noted mezzo-soprano, Sally-Anne Russell, an artist with whom he has collaborated for several years, he has recorded Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzes Op. 52 on CD (with other singers also), performed many times in concerts presented by the Team of Pianists, for the ACT Lieder Society, in ABC studio broadcasts, at Monash University, at the University of Adelaide, as well as in recitals on the Mornington Peninsula.

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 piano faculty at Monash University, as well as a council member and currently President 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. He has given masterclasses in Malaysia, in several cities in Germany, in various universities around Australia, at the Kunitachi Academy in Tokyo, as well as in the USA at Boston University and at the Eastman School of Music. In June of 2008 he visited China for the first time, giving masterclasses in Shenzhen, Nanjing and Hong Kong. Together with Max Cooke, he is one of the co-founders and an adjudicator of the Australian National Piano Award www.pianoaward.com.au 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.

What the critics have said:
"Darryl Coote's authoritative account of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1....showed a surprisingly wide range of touch." Tom Naisby, Newcastle Herald

"Coote comes in clear and his future is bright" Jeremy Vincent, the Melbourne Herald

"Coote's performance was distinguished by clarity of line, tonal ease and perfectly graded dynamics." Barbara Hebden, Brisbane Courier Mail

"No fear, Mr. Coote, your playing was remarkable" Otto Lewe, Neue Westfälische, Germany

"....his splendid technical and conceptual command does the greatest service" Sir Peter Platt, Sounds Australian

"FOCUS ON PERFECTION: An enthusiastic crowd packed into the grand ballroom to enjoy readings of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin that were as masterly as they were fresh and spontaneous. Pianist Darryl Coote provided a sensitive counterweight to Siona Loughnane's violin in Mozart's Sonata in B flat major (K378) and Kristy Conrau's cello in Chopin's Sonata in G minor (Op. 65)...The major work on the program was Beethoven's sublime Trio in B flat (Op. 97),...The trio tackled this most demanding work with all the focussed determination and unfailing stamina that it requires." Johanna Selleck, Herald Sun

"Darryl Coote gave a quick account of the Bach G major French Suite, notable for some nicely detailed polyphonic work in the gigue...Coote worked to even more impressive effect accompanying [Sally Anne] Russell in three Strauss lieder, giving the mezzo's clear and measured attack a highly sympathetic underpinning, their reading of Morgen, Befreit and a glowingly ardent Zueignung making for one of the series' memorable highlights." Clive O'Connell, The Age

"Coote, as in last year's recital with Sally Anne Russell, escorted Hansford through this bleak cycle with a clear eye for the harmonic backdrop to the vocal line that the composer varies so cunningly, as well as coping with some difficult transpositions; one of this artist's most well-considered, sensitive performances." Clive O'Connell, The Age