AIDAN MCGARTLAND

BARITONE
RECIPIENT OF THE HARDY FAMILY SCHOLARSHIP

Aidan is currently studying a Bachelor of Music in performance (voice) and musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and a Diploma of Languages (Italian). He will be commencing Honours in the middle of 2020. Aidan completed his schooling at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School in 2016, having previously attended St Michaels' Grammar School as the choral scholar. He commenced singing at the age of nine, when he joined the Australian Boys’ Choir highest rank of ‘Chorister.’ Aidan is currently learning from Suzanne Johnston and aspires to be a professional opera singer and musicologist.

As a child, Aidan was in the children’s chorus for a number of operas with Melbourne Opera and Opera Australia’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was the first boy in Victorian Opera’s The Magic Flute, under the baton of Richard Gill in 2011, the same year he played the title role of the Son of Getron, a medieval music drama, at the Newman College Advent Festival.

In 2016, Aidan won the Musical Society of Victoria’s under 18 vocal award. In 2017, he was awarded a scholarship to complete his BMus at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and took part in the chorus for the Conservatorium’s production of L’Orfeo. He is a regular participant in Victorian Opera’s annual youth opera and was a member of the Victorian Opera Youth Chorus Ensemble since its founding to 2018. More recently, he was selected to sing in the chorus for Victorian Opera’s William Tell in 2018 and Parsifal in 2019.

From 2018 - 2019, Aidan was the bass choral scholar at St George’s Anglican Church in Malvern then in 2019, he received a scholarship to complete his BMus on exchange at McGill University in Montréal, where he studied singing with Professor Stefano Algieri. In 2020, Aidan proudly joins Opera Scholars Australia.

Besides singing, Aidan’s other musical interest include composition, conducting and the piano. Aidan won the St Michael’s Grammar School inaugural composition prize in 2011. In 2012 he was selected to participate in the Sydney Symphony’s Sinfonietta Composition Project under Richard Gill. In 2017, Aidan co-founded a student run choir based at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music that specialises in music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Aidan also studies piano with ANAM’s Timothy Young. In terms of repertoire, he has a particular interest in music of the 20th century, in particular in the works of Stravinsky, Webern and Messiaen.