He was born in Australia in 1938. He studied at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium. He has been conductor of the New Zealand Ballet and Artistic Director of the New Zealand Opera, conductor of the Scottish Ballet in Glascow (1992-2006), and of the Australian Ballet; he collaborated with the American Ballet Theater, of which he became later the principal conductor (1978-86), and he has also been Music Director at the Sacramento Ballet (1986-88). He has worked with world-renowned ballet artists, such as Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Cynthia Gregory and Yoko Morishita, and with choreographers such as Glen Tetley, Georges Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Agnes de Mille. He has collaborated as an invited conductor with the Ballet of the Teresa Carreño Foundation in Caracas, the Royal Ballet of London, The National Ballet of England, the Royal Ballet of Denmark, the Royal Ballet of Sweden, the Göteburg Ballet and the New National Theater of Tokyo. He collaborated with the GNO in 2006-2007, as principal conductor of its ballet. He conducted, among others, the production Solitaire-Afternoon of a Faun-Les Sylfides (2006-2007).