Carolyn Watson

After graduating with a Bachelor of Music Education, Carolyn received an orchestral scholarship with the ABC Training Orchestra until returning to complete her Bachelor of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Since then she has performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, The Hunter Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Carolyn has had much chamber music experience playing with A Little Night Musik, The Posh, the Windbags Quintet for Musica Viva in Schools programme, as well as performing with Diva Judy Glen in The Spaghetti Opera.

She has been President of the NSW Flute Society and a Board Member of the Australian Flute Society, for whom she produced the bi-annual national flute magazine Flute Australasia for 5 years. In 1993 Carolyn was accepted into Indiana University in the USA to further her flute studies with Peter Lloyd. She also studied baroque performance practice with Eva Legene and Stanley Ritchie in the Early Music department.

Since her return in 1995 she has held the full time positions of principal flute and piccolo with Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast, ShowBoat, Man of La Mancha, Sunset Boulevarde, South Pacific and Titanic as well as being a member of the orchestra for Australian Idol, which included recording Anthony Callea's number one Australian single "The Prayer" in 2005. She has been a lecturer in Flute, Aural and Harmony at the Wesley Institute of Ministry and the Arts and has taught sight - singing skills at the Sydney Children's Choir. Carolyn is the owner and General Manager of Optimum Percussion, a specialist percussion business in Sydney and is also a part-time postgraduate student researching baroque performance practices at the University of Newcastle. She is an examiner for the AMEB, a popular adjudicator and currently performs in several chamber groups including a classical trio called Opus, and a jazz ensemble In Good Company. She has also been a member of the Proms Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House since 2000.

Each year Carolyn co-ordinates the Australian Percussion Eisteddfod, now in its 9th year, an event that brings hundreds of young percussionists from all over Australia to compete in ensemble and solo events.