Choir Man

By Jonathon Welch

He is the man who brought you the award-winning Choir of Hard Knocks - made up of the homeless and the disadvantaged - the judge on Battle of the Choirs, a highly renowned opera singer and conductor who has worked with some of Australia's most talented performers. But Jonathon Welch's own story is less well known, and here he tells it in his own words for the first time. His modest beginnings in suburban Melbourne where he exhibited early 'theatrical' tendencies, his life at the centre of a family falling apart, his coming to terms with his sexuality and the rifts that caused, the discovery of his singing talent, his stellar career in the heady worlds of opera and theatre and the crisis which caused him to question his life's direction and to walk away from it all. In this warm and candid memoir, Jonathon reflects on the forces which shaped him and made him an advocate for social change - and how music was at the centre of helping him put his own life - and that of many others - back together again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730400547

Jonathon Welch

Considered one of the finest tenors of his generation, Jonathon's credits include some 70 roles with most State opera companies and Opera Australia. He has performed with some of the world's most highly regarded singers, directors and conductors, including Dame Joan Sutherland, k.d.lang, Baz Luhrman, Graeme Murphy, Richard Bonynge, Anne Murray and Jimmy Somerville. Born and educated in Melbourne, Jonathon began his singing career with Victoria State Opera, joining their first Australian tour of 'Pirates of Penzance' in 1984 with Jon English, June Bronhill and Marina Prior.

Book preview

This book is for everyone who has ever doubted that one person can make a difference in the world. If you listen to your heart and follow your dreams, they can come true.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Dedication

Introduction A Call from the Blue

1 Finding my Voice

2 Singing Through Silence

3 High Times

4 Going Solo

5 Wide Open Skies

6 The Golden Years

7 Starting Over

Photos

8 Sounds of the Street

9 A Choir is Born

10 From Little Things

11 Play it Forward

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

A Call from the Blue

Said the night wind to the little lamb—‘Do you hear what I hear?’

Oh damn. How does that second verse go?

Said the little lamb…to the Shepherd Boy…Or was it to the mighty wind? Concentrate, I tell myself: just who is this lamb talking to again?

It’s 9 a.m. on Thursday, 6 December, and I’m propped up in bed in my Brisbane hotel room, trying to learn the verses of a Christmas carol that, at age forty-nine, I’ve never sung before. Nor, in truth, would I care if I never have to sing it again, once this ‘Spirit of Christmas’ concert is over.

I’m just starting to get the hang of the song I’m about to sing in front of some 2000 people, which will also be recorded for an ABC TV Christmas special, when my mobile phone rings. An unfamiliar number pops up on the screen. I answer dutifully; it’s a working day, after all. A soft, inviting voice offers a friendly greeting: ‘Hello Jonathon. This is Lisa Curry-Kenny, from the National Australia Day Committee.’

Lisa Curry-Kenny? An image comes to mind: a beautifully bronzed, athletic woman, with blonde hair and a Colgate smile as wide as the Grand Canyon, eating her breakfast Weet-Bix with her Iron Man husband by her side…

‘I’ve rung to congratulate you on your wonderful success on being awarded Victorian of the Year, in the Local Hero category, for 2008,’ says the voice on the end of the line. I’m shocked to realise Lisa has called in her role as Chair of the NADC, and relieved that she’s not trying to sign me up for the Beijing Olympics swim team. But most of all, I’m confused. And there’s more to come.

‘You’ve also been nominated as a finalist for Australian of the Year, Local Hero,’ Lisa continues. ‘If you win, the Prime Minister will present your award in Canberra, on the eve of Australia Day.’ My entire body goes numb; the significance of these words will not sink in for several weeks, until I’m standing next to ‘Kevin 07’ on the enormous stage in front of Parliament House in Canberra.

My first response is to cry. After a few seconds of stunned silence, I come out with, ‘I don’t know what to say!’ (An unusual situation for me, at the worst of times.) Lisa calmly assures me that this is the usual reaction. I try to contain my excitement and stammer out a few grateful words, saying I’m incredibly honoured just to be considered for such an award, let alone the fact that I might receive it. By this stage, I hope I’m sounding semi-coherent.

There are a few formalities to sort out before Christmas, she continues, as the entire country is about to go on holidays over January. Everyone who is nominated must undergo a police check, and my mind whizzes through my past misdemeanours with parking tickets and the occasional speeding fine that might count me out of the running.

Lisa tells me this is her favourite part of the job—calling people to deliver the big news that they’ve been chosen as a finalist for an award. She says she’s looking forward to meeting me in person in Canberra. She sounds like an absolute darling, and indeed my first impressions are exceeded when I finally do meet her, along with her dashing husband, Grant Kenny.

We say our goodbyes. I find myself clutching the pillow I’ve been resting my lyric sheets on, my heart hammering in my chest. I’m still trying to believe what I’ve just heard.

Matt is out in country Victoria, working in his role as Lightning Protection Installation Engineer on a remote job site with no mobile phone reception, and Trish and Alan are at a media launch. My closest confidants are out of range. So who can I share this amazing news with? How will I get through the next few days in Brisbane alone—let alone focus on my singing, and learn the words to these seemingly endless carols—when I’ve just received the most exciting phone call of my life?

All I can think is…it must be Jimmy Barnes’s fault! The Choir of Hard Knocks had sung at the Sydney Opera House several months earlier, and Jimmy told the audience to vote for me as Australian of the Year.

I’m still in shock. How could a kid from the little Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea end up a finalist for one of Australia’s most prestigious awards?

The silver stars are in the sky, the red-gold moon is riding high…

And so it’s back to learning the words of the carols I must sing from memory, then into rehearsal with the Queensland Orchestra and the beautiful Tamsin Carroll, my co-star in this Christmas spectacular. It’s back to business as usual, and back to the thing I most love to do—sing! But my head won’t stop spinning. How on Earth has it come to this?

1

Finding my Voice

It was unusual for a bride to wear pale blue back in the 1940s. In fact, if a woman didn’t wear white, there was always speculation around the reasons for a marriage, especially in country towns. As far as I know, this was not the case with my mother, but I never knew why she decided to break with the tradition of being a white bride. In any case, she looked like a vision from the cover of the latest Woman’s Day as she and my father posed for their wedding photos in front of St Andrew’s Church, in the old gold-mining town of Ballarat, in 1948

Mum wore an exquisite lace gown, and Dad was resplendent in tails, with gloves in hand, sporting the latest moustache copied straight from the Hollywood stars of the day. Their faces shared a look of joy and hope, the look of two people truly in love and meant for each other. Olive and Kenneth were indeed a handsome couple. Having met his bride only eighteen months earlier, my father must have come across as a dashing, charming and debonair engineer. He was born in Sydney to English immigrants Thomas Archibald and Ella Thrale Welch. My paternal grandparents didn’t attend the wedding—nor did Dad’s only brother, George—as they were still living in England. To this day, their background remains a mystery to me. I don’t know how my grandfather came to be an English diplomat; I do know he was a gifted linguist, speaking several languages. In the 1930s he became a Russian consul posted to Sydney, the city where my father and uncle were born.

When it comes to my father’s life, much is missing from the record. Perhaps the saddest aspect of his relationship with us, his children, was his inability to communicate. He found it difficult to express his feelings openly, to talk about his past, or even to discuss present circumstances—with me, in particular, although he sometimes opened up to my older sister, Andrea. But while our father’s feelings were mostly unexpressed, there was no shortage of them on his part: in his later life he’d often sit and listen to music, crying uncontrollably. Opera in particular—along with his great passion, Gilbert & Sullivan songs—could reduce him to tears.

I had scant understanding of the forces that shaped my father’s character until after he died. Only then did I learn that, after World War I broke out, my grandparents were summoned back to England in their official roles as consuls. They decided to leave their two sons in Australia, rather than risk exposing them to the threat of invasion and bombing attacks in the United Kingdom. And so, when my father was seven, he and his older brother were left in the care of a nanny in St Kilda, Melbourne, where they remained until the war ended. Some seven years later the two boys were finally reunited with their parents, after making the long journey back to England by ship alone. My father was fourteen at the time. I can’t imagine how this must have felt for the two young boys—missing the chance to bond with their parents at such a vulnerable age, indeed wondering if they’d ever see them again—but it must have been traumatic. I suspect that my father’s later inability to develop deep, long-lasting, emotional relationships can be traced to his unfortunate upbringing. In a way he was a victim of the war, at least emotionally. The legacy of those years must have weighed heavily on the brothers. When I was eight, my father had to cope with the loss of his brother, George, who died in mysterious circumstances in Yorkshire, England.

From the few stories I remember my father telling of his childhood upbringing, my grandparents were quite stern and formal towards their sons; in their aristocratic world, children were neither to be seen nor heard, especially during the evenings, when they’d host dinner parties and social events in their official capacity, with servants in two to wait on their every need. My father did once tell me, with great fondness, that his parents’ social contacts gave him the chance to go to musical events, especially performances by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, renowned for its Gilbert & Sullivan productions. On that front there was a deeper connection between us: I inherited a natural flair for G&S, and my father was thrilled to see me perform in these musicals in my adult years. He always said I was born to sing and play the G&S tenor roles, and I must say they seemed to come to me naturally. Not until Dad’s funeral, just a few years ago at the time of writing, did I learn that he had swum the English Channel at age eighteen and later fought the Great Fires in London. So much of our relationship was lost to silence. There is so much I’ll never know.

My father had a great passion for the sea, but his application to the navy was mysteriously refused, so he decided to become an engineer. He was restless in England, longing to return to Australia where he’d spent most of his childhood, and so returned to Melbourne to work. That’s where he met my mother, Olive Margaret Hando. She was one of five children, the daughter of farmers who had settled in Charlton, in country Victoria. The family made their migratory journey from England to Australia in the mid-1800s, on the sailing boat Ticonderoga.

My mother Olive was a gentle, elegant and intelligent secretary who looked more like Bette Davis than a farmer’s daughter. She must have been completely swept off her feet by my father, as when they met she was already engaged to Geoffrey McComus, a promising radio announcer who later realised his dream with the ABC. Who knows why that engagement broke off! Perhaps it was my father’s amazing resemblance to Errol Flynn, or his charming English manners. It’s also possible that my mother’s family was impressed by his aristocratic heritage; meanwhile, the Hando bloodline, for its part, was linked to the British royal family.

My parents were very much in love at the start of their marriage, regardless of any questions about status. After they tied the knot, Ken and Olive spent their early married life in Melbourne, where he worked as an engineer and she as a legal secretary. Two years later Ken took a position working in the sulphate industry on the remote island of Nauru, where their first daughter, Andrea, was conceived. Dad always spoke fondly of their time in Nauru, but I suspect Mum saw it as a more primitive experience, being isolated from her wider family and bringing up her first child without their support. After two years in Nauru, they returned to Melbourne, where their second child, Glenn, was born. That’s when my father decided to start his own business running a petrol station. If there was one thing that triggered the undoing of my parents’ marriage, it was this decision. Before long it became clear that Ken was not at all business minded, and the garage was soon in financial ruins.

Meanwhile, our family continued to grow. I was born on 5 October 1958. My earliest childhood memories were very happy ones: I’d spend hours in our backyard at Ripponlea, playing with Rex the family dog, a magnificent and protective Alsatian who never left my side. I’d skip around for hours, amusing myself making up stories to tell Rex in the cubbyhouse Dad built beside the garage, which housed his pride and joy, a sleek pink Pontiac with fin tail-lights. In summer I’d spend hours perched in the lush apricot tree outside my bedroom window, eating the fresh fruit before the birds could get to it. The lemon and fig trees didn’t hold the same allure as the apricots, particularly when Mum made jam from whatever fruit I left behind.

Olive was now busy with three children under age nine, bringing us all up on a single wage, as it had been decided that she’d stay at home to be a mother and housewife. In those days, it was not fashionable for a mother to work: the man of the house was assumed to be the breadwinner. Certainly, Dad felt the pressure to provide for his young family. Those were tense times and arguments ensued. Dad was entrepreneurial, but he seemed to lack good business skills, and looking back I suspect that some of the income from the petrol station was put into my father’s hobbies, which included boat-building.

Our parents never fought in front of us—all their disagreements took place behind closed doors—and in a sense I’m grateful that they never subjected us to these disputes. But I suspect this approach brought its own problems, as I believe it’s healthy to talk through situations openly, to handle disagreement in a constructive way. On reflection, that’s a skill my siblings and I could have benefited from learning if only our parents had taught it. Eventually, when his business failed, Dad went back to corporate life with its stable income, but this often meant travelling interstate for work, and for long stretches at a time.

When Andrea was eleven years old, Glenn was eight, and I was two, my parents made a surprising decision: they adopted a three-month-old baby girl, Elizabeth, or Libby as we called her. We were never sure why our parents decided to adopt Libby. They were in their late thirties when I was born, and already under financial strain. At the time they told us they wanted a little sister for Andrea, but I now wonder if the adoption was a valiant attempt to bring my parents closer—by this stage, obvious cracks were starting to appear in the marriage. Nevertheless, Libby’s arrival brought a great sense of joy into the house, and she became our much-loved little sister, regardless of any problems my parents might have been having. The adoption hinted at my mother’s enormous capacity for love and benevolence, her passion for social justice and her humanitarian heart. She cared deeply about the wellbeing of others, especially those less fortunate than us, and deeply loved and cared for Libby as her own child.

Having grown up in a large country family, Mum was also a great cook, particularly when it came to sweet treats. After dinner there was always either fresh apple crumble, lemon meringue pie, Spanish cream, golden syrup dumplings or rhubarb pie—and if we were really good, a magnificent pavlova, piled high with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. For special occasions, particularly birthdays, a strawberry, vanilla and chocolate marble cake would appear, decked out with candy-stripe candles and doused in lemon icing. Cooking is one talent I did not inherit from my mother, but perhaps this was a blessing—I might have turned out the size of Pavarotti.

I was a chubby kid in my early teens, a period that I referred to later in life as my ‘ugly duckling’ phase. Up until age four I was trim and active, but then I suffered a severe bout of appendicitis that required emergency surgery, almost resulting in peritonitis, and a small section of my bowel was removed. Not the nicest of subjects; I only mention it because the resulting scar tissue has caused a great deal of ongoing pain and discomfort. Complications set in during my twenties, leading to many agonising hours spent in casualty waiting rooms. After several plump years, I eventually transformed into a lithe lad, thanks in part to a nasty bout of glandular fever at age sixteen. While one disadvantage was that I never grew taller than 5 foot 7, I count myself fortunate that these childhood illnesses didn’t affect my voice in the years to come.

Our house in Loch Avenue backed onto Ripponlea Primary School, which saw us through our early years of education. We just had to walk out the back gate and up a lane and we were at school, which also served as a great playground during school holidays and on weekends. We’d come home for lunch most days, often bringing school buddies along. Those were hard times financially, but even if Mum was out that day, there were always fresh sandwiches and milk in the fridge. A favourite weekend pastime for my friends and me was to go out and collect empty bottles from our neighbourhood. We built a billycart from a wooden box and filled it with bottles, which we’d cash in for pocket money to spend on our favourite lollies: sherbet bombs, musk sticks, and my personal preference: chewy white ‘milk bottles’. Back then, it seemed you could get pounds of confectionery for just a few pennies.

As a young boy I’d also earn extra money by working as a paperboy, selling newspapers around Glenhuntly Road in Elsternwick, and delivering pamphlets for the local Four Square supermarket. To this end my mother’s shopping trolley and my prized Dragstar bicycle became handy vehicles for my sense of financial freedom. We were just little kids—I was only eight years old—but in those days paperboys were allowed to go out into the middle of the road, right up to the cars, to sell their newspapers. Of course given the strict policies around minimum working age this would not be allowed today: the whole scenario would be seen as an insurance claim just waiting to happen.

Our neighbourhood had a great sense of community and the whole street was on a first-name basis. Most of my friends lived in surrounding streets and we’d wander from house to house, playing in yards, or riding our bikes to the park. If you misbehaved, you’d get sent home with a smack on the bottom—an acceptable form of punishment back then, whether or not the child was your own. That trust among neighbours and that freedom for children to play in the streets now seem to be long gone.

Every weekend we’d play in the front yard as Mum and Dad manicured the gardens and washed the car. People would stop by to chat, and we had two holes cut in the tops of our boundary fences so Mum could stand on a fruit box and talk to our neighbours on either side. I got my first puppy—my beloved Minnie, a white Cairn terrier cross—from a friend who lived around the corner. Whatever the time of year, this loving, gentle little dog slept at my feet every night, under the blankets. Each morning when Mum woke me up, this tiny lump would wriggle up from the bottom of the sheets, and emerge with a toothy grin and a rapidly wagging tail.

My earliest childhood musical memories involve Mum and Andrea playing the piano and singing, and my own fascination with creating little shows. Andrea took me under her wing, sitting me at the piano beside her and teaching me all the current hit songs and popular tunes Mum had taught her—including the ‘Desert Song’, and the theme from the movie Exodus.

In her teens Andrea showed great musical talent—which, like me, she inherited predominantly from Mum. Andrea had a beautiful contralto voice and sang in many eisteddfods, going on to win a singing scholarship at Toorak Teachers’ College. I vividly remember watching her, aged eighteen, play the role of the mother in Salad Days, her hair up in curlers and a cigarette dangling out the side of her mouth (this was no big deal in those days, as smoking was the fashion of the time). The role brought out her natural musical talents and wicked sense of humour. Glenn had little interest in studying music or singing and displayed no vocal talents, although he did learn piano for a year, under protest. He eventually chose sport as his hobby (far more the norm for boys in those days), and much to my mother’s delight turned out to be a gifted cricketer and footballer. She adored watching him play her favourite sport, AFL football, as well as attending the games of our family’s favourite team, St Kilda.

This was a quirky side to my mother’s personality, given her genteel upbringing. She loved nothing better than to scream her lungs out at the footy on a Saturday, before going to church on Sunday, where she was resident organist for twenty-five years. And you’d never imagine that, before service began, this very ladylike woman would quietly pop out the back of the church for a ciggie. Both my parents smoked but they barely touched alcohol, so the Australian drinking culture—that world of pubs and boozy parties—was never part of our family life, and something still quite foreign to me to this day.

Footy and cigarettes aside, there was a strong musical bent in our family. Dad was a great music lover and Mum was a gifted pianist, with a beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. My aunts Elsie and Ida were also very musical. As a teenager Ida won a singing scholarship to study overseas, but she apparently lacked confidence when performing, so never took up singing as a profession.

At age six, I spent countless hours memorising the words of my first, favourite record, Winnie the Pooh, and creating choreography to match. This was no idle pastime but my first real foray into showbiz. At age seven or eight, I asked the school librarian if I could stage a one-man show in the library. I gathered scenery and props—old cut-out silhouettes of houses, my brother’s bedside lamps shining eerily upward. Mum stitched brown crepe-paper legs to the hem of my school shorts and drew whiskers on my face with an eyebrow pencil. The whole school lined up on the staircase leading to the library, ready to pay their sixpence (five cents) entry fee…and Winnie: the Musical was born! I don’t recall whether I kept the handsome profits from this debut public performance, but not only was it clear that I was ‘very theatrical’ (as Aunt Elsie loved to declare, even decades later in the Green Room of the Sydney Opera House, much to my colleagues’ delight) but also I seemed to have quite an entrepreneurial flair. It wasn’t long before I’d recruited friends to join these musical extravaganzas. Next came The Sound of Music, then Fiddler on the Roof and Paint Your Wagon. I had all the LPs and drove my family crazy with endless renditions of my latest choreography and costuming efforts.

By age five I’d seen my first professionally staged musicals, The Sound of Music and Fiddler on the Roof. As a little boy, watching from the stalls of Melbourne’s Princess Theatre, I never imagined that twenty years later I’d be standing on that same stage, singing with June Bronhill, a legend of Australian music and star of London’s West End. Or that I’d later join Opera Australia, where by chance one of my first understudy roles was in Fiddler on the Roof. All those hours I’d spent listening to my favourite childhood LPs were not wasted!

Andrea and Glenn studied piano with Valda Johnstone, an acclaimed concert pianist living just around the corner from us. She’d abandoned her international career to return home and care for her ill mother. Valda insisted that I couldn’t start piano lessons until I was eight. On the morning of my eighth birthday, in October 1966, I burst out of my bedroom, overjoyed at the prospect of my first lesson. I remember breathing in the sweet scent of jasmine vines during that spring as I sat on a little bench outside Valda’s front door, waiting my turn. Even now, when I catch a whiff of that perfume, it takes me back to Valda’s house in Melby Avenue and the joy and wonder that learning music brought me then, and still does today. When I returned to visit her in March 2008, after losing contact with her for some year, I was saddened to find that not only the beautiful jasmine vines had died but Valda had too—just a few months earlier.

Valda was an animal lover, and the menagerie of stray dogs and cats she’d rescued would wander around the house at leisure. When I visited her in later years we’d sit together sipping tea and chatting about her amazing career, which began with a Melbourne University scholarship during World War I—unheard of in those days—and she’d enquire about my latest roles. In 1990 Valda saw me perform in Graeme Murphy’s Turandot at the State Theatre in Melbourne, which gave her a great thrill, and I was proud that she had come. I was the only one of Valda’s students who followed singing as a profession, and she was happy to have played a