From performing to training, from broadcasting to producing, even to sewing sequins on costumes, Springboard Opera director Leslie Martin has been living and breathing professional opera performance for over 25 years.

Starting at Opera Australia, her own performance career took her overseas before she returned to Brisbane where she continues to work for Opera Queensland. She is a well known voice in Brisbane through her performances with Brisbane orchestras, the 4MBS Festival of Classics and her broadcasts on 4MBS Thursday Night Opera.

Knowing how her own career was supported in the early stage, Leslie wants to create similar opportunities for the emerging artists of South East Queensland.

Leslie has been a Member of the Queensland Arts Advisory Committee 2013 to then Senator George Brandis and a Company Director (2015-2017) of Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing (ANATS). She is currently a board member of 4MBS.

As a member of our board, Leslie brings her industry knowledge and experience, her strategic thinking and her networks to Springboard Opera.

Andrew Robinson has conducted many of the leading orchestras in Australia and the US. Winner of the ABC- Westfield Young Conductor of the Year award in 1997, he was Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra from 1998-2001, performing with the orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

He also conducted performances at the New York City Ballet and with numerous other American orchestras. In Australia, he has appeared with the Queensland Symphony, the Tasmanian Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, the Canberra Symphony, the State Orchestra of Victoria, and the Pacific Chamber Orchestra, among numerous others. From 2007-2012 he led the Queensland Philanthropic Orchestra, a charitable music project that raised nearly $40,000 for Queensland medical research. He has established a long relationship with the Brisbane City Pops Orchestra, with whom he has been working regularly since 2008, and conducted Acis and Galatea for Springboard Opera in 2024. An experienced music educator, Andrew served from 2000-2002 on the conducting faculty at the University of Southern California. He was Music Director of the inaugural Auckland Philharmonia Summer School in 2000, and from 2003-2008 held the same position with the Young Conservatorium Symphony at Griffith University.

Andrew studied flute at the Canberra School of Music, winning the Australian Flute Competition in 1995 before turning to conducting. He qualified as an optometrist in 2006 and is now a partner in private practice in Bardon.

Laura has worked on opera productions across Australia for the last decade as both an artistic and technical collaborator. She wrote and directed Opera Queensland’s most successful touring production Are You Lonesome Tonight (2021), directed and designed Macbeth in Concert (2023) co-directed The Sopranos (OQ) and Home Grown Opera (for OQ and Bleach*), and wrote and directed regional touring productions Lady Sings the Maroons and Do We Need Another Hero.

Laura was the director of the New Years Eve Gala with Opera Australia (2025), the revival director of John Copley's Lucia Di Lammermoor (2024) for State Opera South Australia and is the Associate Director on the Opera Conference Production of Rusalka opening with West Australian Opera in 2024. In 2021/2022 Laura was Resident Director with Circa working across several productions and was the Associate Director on Circa’s Italian Baroque presented with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra at Sydney Festival 2022.

Laura previously worked as the Artistic Associate for OQ and has acted as Associate Director on a variety of productions – for OQ: Così fan tutte (2023) The Marriage of Figaro (2021), Tosca (2019), Songs to Die For (2019); for West Australian Opera La bohème (2023) and for Victorian Opera: The Barber of Seville (2019), Pelléas and Mélisande (2018). She currently holds the position of Director of Learning, Regional and Community with Opera Queensland and leads delivery of the Festival of Outback Opera.

Brad was the Artistic Administrator of Opera Queensland for nearly 13 years. He was one of the original members of the ‘Q Theatre Co’ in 1976, and prior to entering tertiary education performed as an actor/singer in a number of amateur and professional musical and drama productions (Arsenic and Old Lace, Pride and Prejudice, Prometheus Bound, The Gondoliers, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) as well as television series (The Young Doctors) and commercials. He holds a BMG Diploma in Guitar and studied classical singing for several years from esteemed teachers such as Kathleen Horne, Pamela Mildenhall, Florence Taylor and John Fulford.

After completing a Diploma in Teaching in 1980, with majors in both Music and Theatre Arts, he joined the Opera Australia (then The Australian Opera) Stage Management Department, ultimately attaining the position of Senior Stage Manager. In his 11 years with Opera Australia, he worked on more than 55 operas, and stage managed many of the most successful productions performed at the Sydney Opera House, including the sensational staging of Vitttorio Rossi’s Arena production of Turandot at the Sydney Football Stadium.

Other productions include the inaugural live simulcasts on ABC, the inaugural Opera in the Park in Parramatta, Opera in the Domain, concerts and important events in the company’s history including Dame Joan Sutherland’s final performances of Lucia di Lammermoor and Les Huguenots, Luciano Pavarotti’s company debut in La bohème, and Baz Luhrmann’s first foray into opera with Lake Lost. He has worked in every major theatre in Australia and with a great many international and Australian directors and designers, conductors and singers including Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, Rita Hunter, Leonie Rysanek, Sherrill Milnes and Fiorenza Cossotto.