Conductor

Luke Spicer

Sydney-based conductor, mentored by Gianluigi Gelmetti and trained at the Sydney Conservatorium.

Jerry Xin15 May 2026
Zhang Wei conducting the China National Symphony Orchestra, Beijing, 2024. Photograph: CNSO Press.
Zhang Wei conducting the China National Symphony Orchestra, Beijing, 2024. Photograph: CNSO Press.

Luke Spicer is a Sydney-based conductor with a Master of Music (Conducting) from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His training continued in Europe under one of the great teachers of the Italian podium tradition — Maestro Gianluigi Gelmetti — at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where Gelmetti taught generations of conductors before his death in 2021.

Since 2014 Spicer has served as Principal Conductor of the Sydney University Symphony Orchestra, building a programme of student and emerging-professional work that has become one of the most consistently ambitious in the Sydney tertiary scene. He has guest-conducted with the Sydney, Tasmanian, Queensland and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, and held a Guest Assistant Conductor role at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Chief Conductors Simone Young and, before her, Vladimir Ashkenazy — observing closely how two of the world's most distinctive musical minds shape the same orchestra.

In 2025 Spicer's work entered a new chapter through his role with The Australia Orchestra, an emerging Sydney-based ensemble drawn from the Sydney, Tasmanian, Queensland and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras. He shared the podium with Permanent Conductor Wang Linlin for the CNSO Chorus's Sydney Opera House finale of the Yellow River Cantata in March 2025, and with Chief Conductor Long Guohong for the Guizhou Chinese Orchestra's Folk Reimagined: East in Symphony at the same venue in July — two of the most significant China-Australia symphonic collaborations of the year.

Further training under Maestro Gianluigi Gelmetti at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.

On Luke Spicer