Roger Woodward (born 20 December 1942) is an Australian classical pianist, composer, conductor and teacher. Life and career Early life The youngest of four children, Roger Woodward was born in Sydney where he received first piano lessons from Winifred Pope. His mother and second sister were amateur violinists and his father and elder sister sang in the local Chatswood Church of Christ choir. On his first day at Chatswood Public School, he sat next to Peter Kraus, a boy who had survived the Auschwitz train four years before. The six-year olds became lifelong friends and, as he came to know Peter, his brother Paul, and the Kraus family, their story impacted his emerging vision and personal development. He attended the Conservatorium High School and matriculated from North Sydney Boys' Technical High School with a Commonwealth scholarship. Woodward's early studies of Bach organ works with Peter Verco led to his immersion in Bach's cantatas and passion music and training in church music with Kenneth R. Long, music master at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. He performed for the papal organist Fernando Germani and Sir Eugene Goossens, chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, after which he entered the Sydney Conservatorium in the piano class of Alexander Sverjensky (pupil of Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Siloti) and the composition class of Raymond Hanson. In 1963, Woodward graduated with distinction from the Sydney Conservatorium and the Sydney Teachers' College. In the same year, he founded and developed plans for the housing and funding of a competitive, international and quadrennial rostrum originally named the Sydney Piano Competition, together with the support of a wide circle of Sydney musicians and enthusiasts, which was achieved during 1972 to 76. From 1963 to 1965, Woodward continued his organ studies with Faunce Allman while carrying out full-time duties as a choir director and secondary school teacher. During this period he mastered works by Australian composers and Tōru Takemitsu, John Cage Olivier Messiaen and his pupils: Alexander Goehr, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué. In 1964, he won the Commonwealth Finals of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Instrumental and Vocal Competition, the prize for which was to perform throughout Australia with the six ABC State Radio orchestras and in multiple radio and television broadcasts.From 1965–69, he pursued postgraduate studies at the National Chopin Academy of Music, Warsaw, with Zbigniew Drzewiecki. There he befriended the Cuban pedagogue Jorge