Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO

Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO is a proud Yorta Yorta/Yuin soprano and composer. She is a respected human rights advocate and recognised thought-leader on the importance of cultural authority in music and the arts.

Throughout a long and distinguished career, Professor Cheetham Fraillon has championed the voice and visibility of classically trained Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island musicians. She has driven this mission through her achievements as a composer, performer and artistic director of the Australia’s national First Nations Opera Company, Short Black Opera (est. 2009), and Director of Dhungala Children’s Choir (est. 2008). She graduated from The Sydney Conservatorium of Music with a Bachelor of Music Education in 1986.

In 2019 Professor Cheetham Fraillon established the One Day in January project designed to develop and nurture Indigenous orchestral musicians. From this emerged Ensemble Dutala, Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Chamber Ensemble which has led to the increased visibility and status of First Nations orchestral musicians in Australia.

As a composer, Professor Cheetham Fraillon’s list of commissions for major ensembles and companies include works for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Australian String Quartet, West Australian Symphony Orchestra String Quartet, Rubiks Collective, Melbourne Ensemble, The ABC, The Sydney Philharmonia, Plexus Collective, Flinders Quartet Goldner Quartet, The Australian Ballet, Victorian Opera, The MPavilion Project, Chineke! (UK) and Hawai’i Symphony. Professor Cheetham Fraillon’s landmark compositions include Australia’s first Indigenous opera Pecan Summer (2010), Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace (2018) and the ongoing multi layered, multilingual chamber music series Woven Song (2018).

Professor Cheetham Fraillon’s career and achievements have been celebrated with a number of significant awards and commendations including: the Red Ochre Award (2025), the Don Banks Music Award (2023), Queensland Government - Australian Women in Music Lifetime Achievement Awards (2022) and the JC Williamson Lifetime Achievement Award (2021). She has also been awarded the Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award for service to music, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia (2018). In 2014, Professor Cheetham Fraillon was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance. In 2022 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA).

In 2021 Professor Cheetham Fraillon began a five-year appointment as MSO First Nations Creative Chair and in 2023 was appointed the inaugural Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the University of Sydney. She was one of the Victorian nominees for the 2025 Australian of the Year. Professor Cheetham Fraillon describes herself as a “21st century urban woman who is Yorta Yorta by birth, stolen generation by government policy, soprano by diligence, composer by necessity and lesbian by practice.”