Tall Poppies:The Podcast Highlighting Australian Luminaries Abroad

Away from the challenges the world is facing during this pandemic, we are also living through another one of the greatest of scientific endeavours - that is - the attempt to understand the most complex object in the universe, the brain. Researchers are devoting massive amounts of time and energy to exploring what brains do and new technology is enabling them to both describe and manipulate that activity. It came as a surprise to discover that here in Germany, one of the country's leading neuroscientists is Sydney-born Matthew Larkum, who heads the Larkum Laboratory at Humboldt University, Berlin. He joins Breandáin O'Shea on this episode of Tall Poppies: The Podcast.

Stanley Dodds grew up in Adelaide and has been a violinist with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra since the early 90s. He is also a conductor and frequently directs ensembles of the Berlin Philharmonic and in 2014 was appointed Principal Conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He is dedicated to working with youth and amateur orchestras and is in charge of the Berlin Philharmonic Schools Orchestra Concert and Youth Composition Workshop. Stan Dodds is also a member of the Berlin Philharmonic executive board.

Gail Jones one of Australia's most celebrated writers who has a special place in her heart for Berlin. At home, her work has received several major accolades including the 2019 Australian Prime Minister's prize for literature, while abroad Gail's fiction has been translated into fifteen languages and long-listed for esteemed prizes, such as the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

Not many opera singers could match the achievements of the Australian soprano, Joan Sutherland. Her brilliant career stretched over four decades and the legendary singer was celebrated in opera houses and concert halls around the world. Yet, despite her worldwide fame and the many international honours she received during her lifetime, Joan Sutherland remained unaffected by it all. Breandáin met Dame Joan in 2000, during the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Belgium, and recorded this interview.

In this podcast, the extraordinary jazz trombonist Shannon Barnett joins Breandáin to talk about her phenomenal career in music, the challenges she continues to face as a female musician and about the inspiration she finds through teaching the next generation of musicians.

Adam Elliot's films have been featured at hundreds of festivals and have received numerous awards, including an Academy Award for his film, "Harvie Krumpet". Adam calls his films "Clayographies," and by that, he means clay-animated biographies. Their themes are bittersweet and often venture into domains that many filmmakers might normally shy away from. While being hilarious and poignant, they explore friendship, autism, taxidermy, obesity, kleptomania, religious differences and mental illness. This podcast features one of Breandáin's interviews with Academy Award-winner Adam Elliot from 2009.

Tall Poppies Postcard with Poet Robert Gray Over the next few weeks, "Tall Poppies: The Podcast," will feature a series of 10 minute excerpts from archived interviews with renowned Australians. We are calling these, Tall Poppies Postcards. The first features the Australian poet, Robert Gray, an outstanding landscape poet and alongside Les Murray, has been one of the most significant Australian poets of the last decades. Indeed, the late Les Murray said of Robert Gray, " He has a remarkable eye, and the verbal felicity, which must accompany such an eye." Robert has also edited various poetry anthologies and the journals of the painter, John Olsen.Robert has been awarded many of the most-respected Australian literary prizes, including the New South Wales Premier's Poetry Award, the Victorian Premier's Award for Poetry and the Patrick White Award. Many of his poems have been translated into German.

In this episode Breandáin O'Shea meets the Sydney-born painter Heather Betts, who has been living in Berlin, since 1984. She is a graduate of Sydney's Fine Arts Institute, she also studied viola at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Heather moved to Berlin with her husband musician, Brett Dean. Heather has had over forty solo exhibitions, as well as numerous group exhibitions. The influence of her viola studies is omnipresent, as music is a leitmotif of much of her work. Heather talked about those early days in Berlin, when the German capital was still divided by the Berlin Wall. And about a special friendship she shared with Rosie, a prima ballerina from East Berlin that led eventually to her assisting Rosie and her family to escape the Communist regime.

Soprano Siobhan Stagg studied at Melbourne University and later at the Wales International Academy of Voice in Cardiff. Her many accolades include first prize at the 2014 International Mozart Competition. She is a member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and frequently been a guest at many other opera houses, including London's Royal Opera House, the Dutch National Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. On the concert platform, Siobhan has appeared as a soloist at events the likes of the Salzburg Mozartwoche and the BBC Proms, as well as with prestigious ensembles the calibre of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.