Musician Larry Sitsky turned 80 last year, an occasion marked with appropriate fanfare. There were tributes and concerts aplenty to celebrate the works and career of the prolific composer and dedicated teacher who was a founding member of the Canberra School of Music in 1965. He had already been made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2000.
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And the honours haven't stopped. Next Tuesday, Sitsky will be the recipient of the 2015 Distinguished Service to Australian Music Award from APRA AMCOS. He will receive the honour at the 2015 ART Music Awards ceremony at Sydney's City Recital Hall on Tuesday, August 11. The previous winners of the award from the amalgamation of the Australasian Performing Right Association and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners' Society have been John Hopkins and Patrick Thomas (2011), Peter Sculthorpe (2012), George Dreyfus (2013) and Richard Gill (2014).
Sitsky said, "It's really nice to get a pat on the back."
"I've managed to have a rich series of experiences - I've never limited myself in any way."
Sitsky said he was also someone who also looked forward rather than backward.
"The Beatles song says, 'I believe in yesterday' - well, I don't!"
He said his next project was a "grand opera for computer" written in collaboration with Canberra poet John Stokes and adapted from Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. While it was still in the early stages he was excited by the technical and artistic possibilities.
"It might be totally digital," he said.
While reluctant to single any project or experience out as a favourite, he said he was proud of the fact he had been prolific and varied in his output, with more than 200 works ranging from student piano pieces to full-length operas to his credit even though he stopped assigning numbers to them after his Opus One, a violin sonata.
"It seemed too much like a countdown to me."
Sitsky was born in China to a Russian Jewish family that emigrated to Australia in 1951. He had begun studying piano at the age of four and entered the Conservatorium of Sydney in 1952. But although there were composers on staff, composition wasn't offered.
"Australian music at that time wasn't considered important," he said. He would be one of the people to help change this view, not just as a composer but as a performer, playing and recording works by composers such as Roy Agnew.
In 1959 he won a scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory and after two years returned to Australia and joined the staff of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.
In 1966 he was appointed Head of Keyboard Studies at the School of Music in Canberra where he was later Head of Musicology, Head of Composition Studies, Head of Academic Studies and more recently Distinguished Visiting Fellow, as well as Emeritus Professor.
In teaching, Sitsky said, his exhortation to students was, "I want to see the blood on the keys ... Music requires total dedication, otherwise forget it."
