The choir and the musical leadership behind it

Founder and director

Judith Clingan AM

Judy is an Australian composer, conductor, singer, recorder player, bassoonist, director, writer, visual artist and educator. Born in Sydney in 1945, she graduated from the Australian National University in 1966 and founded the Canberra Children's Choir in 1967.

Her background includes study in voice, bassoon, composition and choral conducting, as well as music education at the Kodaly Institute in Hungary. She founded Gaudeamus Music and Performing Arts in 1983, Voicebox Youth Opera Canberra in the 1990s and Wayfarers Australia in 1997, and has directed many choirs and music theatre projects. Her work combines rigorous choral training with theatre, story, movement and visual imagination. She has taught music in schools, community organisations and Steiner/Waldorf settings across Australia and abroad, and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1986 for services to music.

Judy remains an important and active member of the Wayfarers community, while long-standing Wayfarers now lead practical responsibility for major international activities. Together, they are carrying forward the musical, educational and community traditions Judy has established and nurtured over many years.

Logistics

Nishka Varghese

Nishka Varghese is a Production/Stage Manager and theatre tech with over eight years of experience in theatre. She has been a Wayfarer since 2013, starting out as a performer, and has since moved to working primarily on administration behind the scenes. Nishka’s management ethos is grounded in doing everything she can to support the creative vision of the show, ensuring productions and tours reach a high standard of quality while fostering a positive and rewarding experience for the whole team. Nishka is delighted to be a torchbearer, having been a part of Wayfarers for more than half her life. She adores this company and cannot wait to share in its growth.

Logistics

Yani Joannidis

Yani Joannidis, a Steiner graduate from Melbourne, is a music and theatre all-rounder. He has been a Wayfarers organiser since his first tour in 2017. He believes that singing with others creates meaningful and lasting connections. As an educator and mentor, he enjoys helping people develop new skills and discover themselves. As a facilitator, he loves inspiring those around him to produce their best work. Yani recognises that Wayfarers is the people in it. He values clear communication, teamwork, and a sense of shared purpose; and is committed to creating a positive, supportive, and enjoyable atmosphere. Yani continues to embrace new challenges, steadily growing as both a creative and as a leader.

Director of Sydney Wayfarers, co-director of Melbourne Wayfarers

Rohan Vicars

Rohan Vicars has been singing with Wayfarers since he first encountered it during a school visit from Judy in 1996. Since then he has sung in the majority of Wayfarers tours and has become an important member of numerous other reputable choirs. He has significant experience teaching choral singing in school contexts, as well as helping run Wayfarers choirs in both Melbourne and Sydney. Aside from his work as a conductor, he is a drama teacher and an IB and Steiner-trained English teacher, with 8 years of experience in schools and many more in diverse Wayfarers educational contexts. For Rohan, singing is the ultimate expression of community at its best, and he is always up for making beautiful harmonies with any like-minded soul willing to sing with him.

Co-director of Melbourne Wayfarers

Elizabeth Howes

Elizabeth is an experienced primary school teacher, cellist, singer, and all-round music lover. The youngest child of a passionately musical family, she learned to sing rounds and harmonies at the age of seven, and was part of several diverse and high-performing choirs throughout secondary school and university. She became involved in Wayfarers in 2024 after attending a Melbourne Wayfarers concert and being immediately transported back to her childhood with the music! She attended her first Wayfarers tour, Vox Humana, in 2025, as a chorister, cellist and theatrical mover. Later that year she made her conducting debut with the Melbourne Wayfarers, thus realising a lifelong dream. Elizabeth loves singing in harmony with others at any spontaneous opportunity, running workshops and bringing people together through music, and sharing the joy of Wayfarers songs with people of all ages.

Torchbearer

David Cassat

David has been an active Wayfarer since 1997, having first been a student of Judy Clingan as a child and subsequently performing in many of her choirs and ensembles over several decades. A composer, teacher, instrumentalist and chorister, he has also sung with the Canberra Bach Ensemble and Oriana Chorale, and was Assistant Musical Director of Wayfarers for the 2019 tour. David is based in Cairns, Queensland, where he often works as a piano accompanist for string students at the Cairns Violin Studio.

Torchbearer

Ellen Brown

Ellen first became involved with Wayfarers at around 12, while singing alongside her dad in their Steiner school community choir. As an adult, Ellen joined the Wayfarers’ year long tour in 2012 and travelled all around the world and Australia spreading the joy of singing and connecting through music. Since then, Ellen has enjoyed travelling with the Wayfarers on numerous tours and concert programs and she keeps coming back for more! When not touring, Ellen sings in a number of notable choirs across Sydney and Melbourne. Ellen is trained as a Steiner class teacher and classroom music teacher with a Bachelor of Music, and she strives to facilitate meaningful music endeavours in her schools and local community. When she is not singing in choir or teaching, Ellen enjoys swimming, lush bushwalks and frolicking around. (See limerick below).

There once was a lady called len
She flappéd her wings like a wren
She fell off a tree
Damaged her knee
And wept bitterlyyyy (ouch!) again

Co-conductor of Melbourne Wayfarers

Gawain Davey

Gawain is a Melbourne-based composer, songwriter, teacher and multi-instrumentalist. He performs with local groups, teaches music to children and adults of all ages, and co-conducts Wayfarers in Melbourne. He sings and plays piano, alto saxophone, clarinet and recorder, bringing a broad practical musicianship to his work. After studying a music degree at Melbourne University, Gawain later joined Wayfarers Australia on their year-long world tour in 2012, which inspired him to properly try to be a composer. Since then Gawain has written music for orchestras, choir, chamber groups and soloists, across multiple genres. He has helped to lead Melbourne Wayfarers concerts in 2014-15 and 2023-2026, and loves to inspire singers and instrumentalists to create polished and richly diverse concerts.

Torchbearer

Kia Hei Moon

Kia has been singing with Wayfarers since the age of ten, when she joined the 2000 European tour. Since then, she has participated in more than a dozen Wayfarer-related concerts and tours, including the year-long 2012 tour which she describes as “truly life-changing”. As a teenager, Kia frequently assisted Judy Clingan with her IMAGINE holiday programs. She later co-directed Judy's Ring Bearer production in 2012 and 2025, and for the 2019 Harmonia Mundi tour she choreographed Fruits of Life.

Kia is a Steiner-trained primary teacher and will complete her six-year class journey at the end of 2026. Music is central to her daily classroom rhythm and a true passion of hers! She also sings with Syrinx, a highly regarded ten-piece vocal ensemble based in the Northern Rivers.

For Kia, music is life. She believes it is a universal language of the heart - one that nurtures connection, cultivates harmony, and speaks to the deepest parts of what it means to be human.

Torchbearer

Nadja Schneller

Nadja first met and sang with the touring Wayfarers group in 2012 when they gave workshops in Germany. She then joined the Taiwan/Japan tour in 2014 and has been a dedicated Wayfarer since. Nadja is a classically trained flautist and has been playing in many different orchestras and ensembles over the years. She is currently based in Townsville and regularly performs with the Great Barrier Reef Orchestra. Nadja is also a passionate choral singer and loves sharing her passion for music with people of all ages. As a former Steiner student Nadja has a keen interest and passion for many creative arts, including drama, set and costume design, dance and eurythmy. While pursuing a career in science, Nadja loves staying involved in Wayfarers for the nurturing and long-lasting connections with people from diverse backgrounds and the joy of inspiring children to sing, learn instruments and experience the power of harmonic music-making.

Torchbearer

Raphaela Mazzone

Raphaela has been singing with Wayfarers since its first international tour in 2000. As well as being a member of a number of other reputable choirs over the years she is always drawn back to Wayfarers because of the fun, vibrant culture, and ever present passion for music and all the arts. Raphaela is an experienced teacher across a range of ages and subject areas. She brings to Wayfarers a wealth of production experience, as well as playing a supporting role in planning, logistics, teaching and all round problem solving.

Torchbearer

Yasmin Funk

Yasmin eagerly joined the very first Wayfarer tour in 1997 after meeting Judy and her travelling Mt Barker choir when they visited her school. The tour to Europe in 2000 came at the perfect time for her at the cusp of adulthood, and she has been involved with Wayfarers ever since. Yasmin is enthusiastic about bringing new, exciting and unfamiliar choral repertoire to unsuspecting audiences, musical and dramatic workshopping with children, and sharing in the joy of spontaneous harmony at every (in)appropriate moment. Wayfarers nourishes her musically but also with artistic inspiration, linguistic debate, and by facilitating connections with interesting and enthusiastic people from all walks of life all over the world.

In normal life Yasmin lives with her family in Sydney and sings in a number of local choirs. It has been a privilege in recent years to share Wayfarers with both her mother and now her four children.