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Jun 30, 2025
Matthew Westwood

Untold Stories: Jenny Donald

Behind the Music Development

No hard cell in love of music

The years that Jenny Donald spent working on her PhD in Adelaide in the late 1970s coincided with the beginning of what would become a lifelong devotion to chamber music.

By day, Jenny was working in the lab at the University of Adelaide, peering into microscopes and growing kangaroo cells from marsupial blood and skin samples.

‘We grew them in cough-medicine bottles – we couldn’t afford the fancy plastic flasks,’ Jenny recalls. ‘I mapped a couple of genes onto a kangaroo chromosome in my PhD. It seems like a modest accomplishment these days, but in those days it was cutting-edge technology.’

In the evenings, Jenny was cultivating her love of chamber music. An aunt and uncle in Adelaide were involved in the music scene, and Jenny recalls there being piles of LP records at their home and dinners with the likes of Edith Dubsky, who was for many years the honorary secretary and chief organiser for Musica Viva Australia in the city.

Jenny started going to concerts with her aunt and uncle. One that has particularly stayed in her memory was with the Sydney String Quartet.

‘They played Ravel’s String Quartet and I was completely blown away by it,’ she says. ‘I’d never heard music like that before. And that was it – I just kept going to concerts.’

Moon Radio Hour perform and Penrith Public School. Photo credit: Keith Saunders

Moon Radio Hour perform and Penrith Public School. Photo credit: Keith Saunders

Chamber music has grown on Jenny so profoundly that she wants others to share the enjoyment it gives her. With her family, Jenny is a National Education Supporter for Musica Viva Australia In Schools, helping to deliver live music to thousands of primary-age students across the country. Jenny and her husband Stephen Burford also support Musica Viva Australia’s mainstage concerts as Sydney Concert Champions – most recently for the Hollywood Songbook tour with the Signum Saxophone Quartet and Ali McGregor. 

After completing her PhD, Jenny moved to London as a medical researcher and immersed herself in the city’s cultural life.

An a-ha moment, when she finally ‘got’ opera, was seeing Carmen at the Royal Opera House with Agnes Baltsa and José Carreras. But her main love was chamber music, and she would go to several concerts a week if she wanted to, at the Southbank Centre or Wigmore Hall.

‘In my five years in London I must have gone to several Beethoven cycles and a Bartok cycle at Wigmore Hall,’ she says. ‘Everyone was so serious, sitting there with their scores. The nice thing about being in London was there were lots of cheap seats if you were a young person. I just went to an incredible array of things.

‘It’s chamber music that I find so enthralling and I can get really immersed in it, listening to a string quartet and following the four voices as they interact with each other.'

Many times, the music has moved me to tears.

'I really can’t talk at the end of a piece.’

Jenny and Stephen have two adult children, Claire and Andrew, both of whom studied music through their school years. Claire played cello and Andrew the clarinet, and they had ample opportunities for joining orchestras and chamber groups.

‘My kids had such fantastic musical experiences in the state system,’ Jenny says. ‘We just happened to have a great local primary school and they got into selective schools with really talented musical kids.

‘I was on parent committees at the primary school and the high school, so I got to see a lot of kids and watch them on their musical journey. I saw how much everybody got out of the music, and I know that lots of kids at other schools don’t have that opportunity.’

It explains why Jenny and the Donald family have so generously supported Musica Viva Australia In Schools.

‘It’s a wonderful thing if more children can be exposed to music,’ she says. ‘Hearing a Musica Viva Australia In Schools concert can inspire these kids. If you don’t see people playing music, you don’t know that you could do it, too.’ 

A Winter's Journey, Allan Clayton & Kate Golla. Photo credit: Bradbury Photography

A Winter's Journey, Allan Clayton & Kate Golla. Photo credit: Bradbury Photography

As a supporter of Musica Viva Australia’s concert tours, Jenny says she is excited at the variety of chamber music that Artistic Director Paul Kildea brings to Australian audiences.

‘Paul has brought some really interesting combinations of instruments that you wouldn’t have thought of – like the Signum Saxophone Quartet,’ she says. ‘And I love the visual aspect in concerts such as A Winter’s Journey, which was just stunning.

‘I enjoy the fact that we get the classics of the repertoire and different sorts of musical experiences. I feel that I’m still discovering new things.’

Jenny’s work in medical research helped identify the genetic contribution to diseases such as testicular cancer and familial hypercholesterolemia. She particularly enjoyed the intellectual challenge of genetics, working alongside teams of clinicians and lab researchers and analysing the data they produce. For many years she also taught human genetics at Macquarie University.

Is there a particular gene for music?

‘There isn’t a gene for music, that’s for sure,’ Jenny says. ‘But as with a lot of things, there’s a combination of aptitude and environment, and things that come together in particular ways – when people have a “good ear” and can easily sing in tune, that is probably an inherited ability. 

‘But loving music is a different thing again. You don’t need to have a really good ear to love music. It’s about being exposed to musical experiences that move you and excite you, and that get you thinking.’

This is part of a series of Untold Stories, about the people behind the music at Musica Viva Australia. Play your part in the future story of Musica Viva Australia by making a gift in our 80th anniversary year. To discuss making a gift, please contact Matthew Westwood, mwestwood@musicaviva.com.au