The only Parsi to feature in the Australia Day Honours list on January 26, 2019 was musicologist Cyrus Meher-Homji of Sydney. He was selected for the Order of Australia Medal for services to performing arts, particularly music. In earlier years, the community in Sydney rejoiced when Piroozi Desai-Keane, Dr Marlene Kanga and Ervad (Dr) Peshotan Katrak received Order of Australia awards.
Cyrus Meher-Homji (inset and far r) with Andre Rieu (center) and George Ash
A performing pianist, Meher-Homji is the founder of Eloquence (Australia), the recording label launched for Universal Music Australia (UMA) two decades ago. Eloquence is devoted to reissuing key recordings from the rich heritage of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon (see "Music man,” Zoroastrians Abroad, Parsiana, February 21, 2012). His television program Good Listening offers a platform for classical music recordings. It continues to broadcast on SBS and Foxtel networks in Australia. He records his shows and delivers to his listeners fluently and with great enthusiasm without reading from a piece of paper or a cue card.
As general manager, classics and jazz of UMA, Meher-Homji has helped the department to flourish and recently expanded its activities into presenting live concerts, noted UMA’s media manager Tom Ford. Universal Music Group chair and chief executive officer Sir Lucian Grainge commented, "There are few people in Australia, or the world for that matter, who have done as much as Cyrus to advance jazz and classical music.” George Ash, president of the company’s Asia Pacific operations described him as "a tireless champion for the arts, for artists and for the development of culture via the creative process that is music.”
"As a producer, I want to harness great, new, exciting, different and creative talent so it could be experienced to the fullest. My research and writing helped me develop techniques to delve into the Aladdin’s Cave of recordings from the past and to help revive them and write about them,” he was quoted in Indian Link (Australia). In the mid-1990s he had created an innovative classical music magazine Soundscapes that had an international circulation.
"Professionally there has never been a more exciting time to be working with classical music and jazz. With the opportunities for the parallel universes of creation and rediscovery, what was once termed as niche, finally gets the chance to escape those self-imposed chains and be recognized for what is really is: music for all to enjoy,” he told The Music Network.
Having grown up in Poona in a musically inclined family, his paternal grandfather Manchi Meher-Homji was a dentist and a violinist who had a large collection of records. Manchi was a good friend of Mehli Mehta (maestro Zubin’s father) and performed regularly in concerts of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mehli. "So classical music was always in the air. I was passionate about it and started taking piano lessons at the age of five.”
Cyrus migrated to Perth on a music scholarship and then moved to Sydney to further his career as a pianist. But he was drawn towards music writing. An author and regular contributor to books and music journals, magazines and newspapers, he has penned several entries on pianists in the second edition of the 29-volume music encyclopedia The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as well as The Oxford Companion to Australian Music.
Kersi Meher-Homji