Helen Quach

Helen Quach ( "quok"; 4 July 1940 – 31 July 2013) was a Vietnamese-born symphony conductor who founded the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra in Sydney, served as the music director of the Manila Symphony Orchestra and guest conducted for symphonies around the world.

Quach was educated in New South Wales, where she studied under noted Russian conductor Nikolai Malko. She then took a conducting course from Sir John Barbirolli and Carlo Zecchi in Italy before moving to the US to serve as an assistant to Leonard Bernstein. She is considered as the first Asian female conductor hired by Bernstein in 1967. (The first female conductor hired by Bernstein was Sylvia Caduff in 1960). Helen Quach spent much of her adult life in Australia and the Philippines. Critics often commented on her toughness in spite of a diminutive appearance.

Early life Quach was born in Saigon on 4 July 1940, to Chinese parents; her father was in business and her mother was a musician. Quach began playing the piano at the age of five.

Quach came from an academically oriented family. Her two brothers both became physicians. On her decision to attend a music conservatory, she said she thought that universities become "too academic. I don't like to clutter up my life with all those degrees."

In 1958, Quach was a second-year student at the NSW Conservatorium when she became one of the first two women awarded a scholarship to study under noted conductor Nikolai Malko, who was then the musical director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The announcements of the award had specifically excluded women, but Malko said he reconsidered because Quach and the other female recipient were "more than usually talented". In 1964, Quach won a scholarship for a conducting course taught by Sir John Barbirolli and Carlo Zecchi in Sicily. "Miss Quach runs the danger of being a pretty young woman, and thus conquering all hearts for non-musical reasons. But ... she seems to be at her best in works of large dimension (odd for so diminutive a creature) and if there can be such a thing as a maestra, Miss Quach could well be it," Bernstein said. In 1977, about a decade into her career, Quach was one of very few females conducting major symphonies anywhere in the world (others included Sarah Caldwell of Boston, Sylvia Caduff, and Zheng Xiaoying). Still, Quach once said that she felt she had been most hindered by people of her own ethnicity. "As you know, an orchestra is supported by the society and Chinese society is not the best soil to develop musical talents. All parents want their children to become doctors or engineers. Nobody wants their children to dedicate their lives to music," she said.

Later life While living in Taipei, Quach was diagnosed with cancer. She refused conventional medical treatment and moved back to Australia. Quach developed a following in the Philippines and she returned to the country in 2007 and 2008. On the latter trip, she conducted the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra for La bohème. Reporting on her death, the Philippine Daily Inquirer referred to Quach as "the dragon lady of the podium". "I just never met anyone that I wanted to share my life permanently with," she had explained in the 1980s.