By Ariela Bard

It's a glorious March evening when 25 students from the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), the nation's most prestigious classical music training school, take their places alongside the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for the first performance of the SSO's production of Gurrelieder.

[...] You have to squint to notice Lydia Sawire, aged 25, on violin and Noah Lawrence, 21, on cello - students from ANAM taking part in what is essentially some of the most elite workplace training in the world. 

On this same night, Ronan Apcar, a student in his second year at the Academy, is having a very different experience, travelling between Tongala and Mumurkah in northern Victoria, performing mini operas in their town halls. "A lot of them told me that they had never seen a concert like it before," Apcar tells me over sandwiches in the Academy's kitchen. "One week we could be taking part in collective improvisation or taking a place beside members of the SSO. None of us feels like one is more important than the other. It's all music making. Their contribution to Australian culture by performing at this unbelievably high standard is probably just as impactful as playing in these towns to a couple of hundred people."