For more than 69 years, the North of Perth Music Festival has brought performers, adjudicators and audiences together each spring, in association with the City of Bayswater.
For over 69 years, the Festival has existed for one purpose: to give participants of all ages a public stage, an audience to perform for, and helpful, personal reports from qualified adjudicators.
Zenith Music becomes the Festival's main award sponsor, a relationship that continues to this day through the cash prize for the Overall Most Outstanding Performance.
The City of Bayswater becomes the Festival's Major Sponsor, helping build a solid foundation and instigating major improvements in the standard and running of the Festival.
Tenor Paul O'Neill wins the Overall Most Outstanding Performance, going on to a career that would take him from the WA Academy of Performing Arts to the Staatsoper Berlin.
The Festival now runs across five categories, piano, strings, voice, instrumental, and speech and drama, still adjudicated with the same qualified, personal feedback it began with.
Paul O'Neill was the winner of the Overall Most Outstanding Performance at the 2003 North of Perth Music Festival. An internationally renowned tenor, Paul O'Neill is one of Western Australia's finest musical exports.
After graduating from the WA Academy of Performing Arts, Paul studied in London and Cardiff before moving to Germany, where he has performed with the Staatsoper Berlin.
“Many outstanding singers, actors and artists, the likes of Lisa McCune and the late Heath Ledger, have come through this Festival in their early stage of development.”
