Adrian Wintle has pursued a long and distinguished career in church music and arts journalism in Australia, the UK and Canada.
Born in Brisbane and educated in Sydney, he studied piano with Hugh Bancroft, Frank Hutchens and Winifred Burston, and organ with Mervyn Byers at St Andrew’s Cathedral, where he was later appointed assistant organist. In journalism he trained on the Bulletin before becoming associate music and theatre critic on the Sydney Morning Herald.
In 1962 he went to London, studying at Trinity College of Music and Durham University. As well as teaching at three London high schools he spent five years as music critic for Musical Opinion. In 1967 he went to Canada to study musicology at Toronto University, was assistant editor of Opera Canada and returned to Australia in 1971 as senior publicity officer in the ABC's Federal Concerts Department.
In 1974 he was appointed Lecturer in Music at RCAE in Wagga, and in 1981 joined the Wagga Daily Advertiser, becoming chief of staff and writing on music, theatre and travel. His weekly ‘Focus on Arts’ column ran for 23 years, and extracts from his theatre reviews appear in Leslie Rees’s definitive History of Australian Drama. He also contributed reviews to Theatre Australia and was a theatre assessor for The Australia Council Theatre Board. His series of articles titled 'The Bulletin in the Fifties' appeared in the Wagga Daily Advertiser in 1984 and was reprinted in Southerly magazine in 1994.
From 1993 to 1997 he served as director of Riverina Conservatorium of Music, became inaugural University Organist at Charles Sturt University in 2000 and in 2005 was awarded honorary life membership of the Australian Journalists Association. In 2006/7 he returned to composition, writing choral music for St John’s Anglican Church in Wagga (an early Magnificat in G had been published in New York in 1975). He was runner up in the inaugural 2007 RSCM (ACT) Composition Competition, and in 2008 he took first prize in the second RSCM competition with Psalm 150. In 2009 he was equal first prize winner (with Canberra composer Les Davey) with The Choristers’ Prayer.
In 2011 he was commissioned by Riverina Conservatorium of Music to compose a work for organ, performing the piece, Elegy in Memoriam MJ Byers, initially in Wagga on June 30 and at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney on December 1. In 2012 he was interim director of music at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Wangaratta, and director of music and organist at St Matthew’s, Albury, relinquishing the latter position in December.
In 2013 his schedule includes recitals at Leeton, Narrandera, Wagga and St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney. The Sydney recital on December 12 will include new works dedicated to him by Ann Carr-Boyd and John Ross as well as 20th century American music.
