Rosanne Hunt.

Cello.

Image by Kate Baker.

 

  • When my mum started teaching me the cello when I was 6. Why? Because all 5 kids learnt an instrument and I was the youngest so of course, I learnt something. I don’t remember actively choosing cello, but I started, and was quickly hooked…

  • Haven’t done many yet… but probably Pierrot.

  • I love growing vegetables, and seeing zillions of worms in the compost is one of the ongoing thrills of life.

  • Impossible to answer. But I do remember being utterly blown away at the opera twice: “Capriccio” by Richard Strauss, and “The Turn of the Screw” by Benjamin Britten. Also, I was crazy about the novels of Herman Hesse and Knut Hamsun in my late teens and twenties, then George Eliot’s novels in my 30s. And the film “The Virgin Spring” of Bergman.

  • Taylor Swift “You belong with me”

 

Rosanne Hunt loves cello more and more as she gets older. She cut her cellist teeth in the 1970s with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, touring Europe with them when she was just 13, and progressed to leading the Australian Youth Orchestra cellos on their 1984 European tour. She has had fascinating and superbly enriching times studying with philosopher-cellist Anner Bylsma in The Netherlands, and with Irene Sharp in San Francisco, but the huge value of her early grounding with her mother, iconic cello teacher Marianne Hunt, and then with Christian Wojtowicz in Hobart is not to be underestimated.

There were detours into studying medicine and organic farming, but music always has wooed her back. She has had fabulous times over the years playing with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, the ELISION (founding member) Libra and Aphids contemporary music ensembles, the Melbourne Symphony, Orchestra Victoria (sometimes as principal cellist), and is now involved in the Melbourne Baroque Orchestra (founding member) and Forest Collective, as well as chamber engagements with pianist Brian Chapman, flautist Kim Tan (for ABC radio’s The March of the Women, pianist Danae Killian (recording works of Haydn Reeder for MOVE records), singer Jenny Duck Chong and composer Elliott Gyger (recording Elliott’s prize-winning Autobiochemistry) and with Jaso Sasaki (violin) and Simon Oswell (viola) in Trio Belle Époque, which will appear at the Clunes Chamber Festival in October. She is also a regular guest at the Albury Chamber Music Festival.

Rosanne is in high demand as a teacher, both at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School and at her private studio. She loves working with students to find the path that suits them best and engenders a love for the instrument.

In 2002, Rosanne set up the Hunt Family Memorial Fund, which honours her mother Marianne, wonderful cellist sister Tanya Prochazka (both of whom died in 2015), and father Kenneth who was a fine clarinettist alongside his career as an engineer. The fund helps disadvantaged young musicians attend the Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp.