In Europe’s fiercely competitive classical music world, Australian conductor Sam Weller has a quirky trademark to help him stand out from the crowd. His classic Aussie mullet has helped him get noticed in a scene where Australian conductors – despite the stratospheric success of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Simone Young – remain something of a novelty. “I have the mullet and moustache, so people know I’m Australian.
It’s sort of a package deal,” he says. “I do know someone in the Netherlands has been like, ‘I can’t remember his name, but get the guy with the ‘tache and the mullet’. It becomes part of your identity.
” Sam Weller with members of Ensemble Apex in the basement of Sydney Town Hall. Credit: James Brickwood But you don’t get as far as Sydney-born Weller has come aged just 26 on an eccentric barnet alone. He also brings to the table prodigious talent, a huge capacity for hard work and a gleeful tendency to bite off way more than he can chew and worry about the details later.
“My modus operandi is to find something to do, then figure out how to do it afterwards,” he says over beers at the Newtown Hotel. In 2016, Weller founded Ensemble Apex, an orchestra composed of mostly young, professional Australian players that has since delivered several sold-out programs in Sydney, including an extraordinary performance last year of Verdi’s Requiem in Dangrove, philanthropist Judith Neilson’s soaring art storage facility in Alexandria. Sa.