Roger Robert Woodward AC OBE (born 20 December 1942) is an Australian classical pianist, composer, conductor, teacher and human rights activist.

[2] Early studies of Bach organ works with Peter Verco were followed by a training in church music with Kenneth R. Long, organist and master of the choristers at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.

In 1969–70, Woodward toured widely with the Wiener Trio and was artist in residence at the Casa de las Américas before performing at UNESCO 's Jeunesses Musicales where Yehudi Menuhin was jury member.

During the same period, Woodward worked with David Tudor and John Cage[c] for the British premiere of HPSCHD at the International Carnival of Experimental Sound and the BBC Proms.

[28][29] In 1972, Woodward made his American debuts with the brass players of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Olivier Messiaen and Zubin Mehta,[30] with whom he subsequently performed in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York and Paris.

[24] In 1973 he participated in the inaugural celebrations of the Sydney Opera House as a part of tours for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and Musica Viva which included first performances of works by Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, Barry Conyngham and Anne Boyd.

[34] That year, Woodward founded Music Rostrum Australia at the Sydney Opera House where he collaborated with Richard Meale, Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, David Gulpilil and Yūji Takahashi.

In 1989, Woodward was commissioned by the Festival d'automne à Paris for the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution when he premiered his work for two pianos and live electronics—Sound by Sound.

[51] In the same year he founded the Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music (1989–2001) and Alpha Centauri, a new-music ensemble of 23 soloists, which had presented and recorded Kraanerg.

During that year he performed at Théâtre Marigny (home to Boulez's Domaine musical) for the Festival d’automne and worked with Arvo Pärt, Gehlhaar, Rădulescu, Chris Dench and James Dillon, for the premiere of the first part of The Book of Elements in London and subsequently, at the Sydney Spring.

In the same year he founded the Joie et Lumière chamber music festival at Le Château de Bagnols (1997–2004),[53] to celebrate the life and work of Sviatoslav Richter.

During 2002–2018 he toured with SFSU colleagues—the Alexander String Quartet—in the United States and Germany where he recorded works of Beethoven, Chopin, Shostakovich and Robert Greenberg.

Woodward is a pianist with a powerful virtuoso technique and his performances are renowned for their precision, insight, and depth of interpretation, although sometimes reviewed as unorthodox for their modernity.

He has received wide critical acclaim as a leading interpreter of avant-garde works of the second half of the 20th century,[1] including those of: Boyd,[55] Feldman, Gehlhaar, Másson,Takemitsu,[56][h] Qu Xia-Song, Rădulescu, Xenakis,[49][i][57] and recordings with Boulez,[58] Barraqué,[59][60][61] Stockhausen,[24] Bussotti,[62][63] Fariñas, Brouwer, Conyngham, Edwards, Peter Michael Hamel, Lutyens, Rands[64] and Cage.

Notable conductors with whom he worked include: Mehta, Abbado, Boulez,  Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Edo de Waart, Charles Mackerras,  Kurt Masur,[69] Paavo Berglund, Georg Tintner, Tan Lihua, Erich Leinsdorf, Walter Susskind, Georges Tzipine, Paul Terracini and Péter Eötvös.

As a conductor, some of Woodward's performances include: the Xenakis ballet Kraanerg[70][71][72] at the Sydney Opera House; working with the Shanghai Conservatory Orchestra, the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra and with the Alpha Centauri Ensemble at Scala di Milano, for BBC2 Television,[73][74] the Festival d'automne à Paris [fr],[75] the Academia Santa Cecilia, Biblioteca Salaborsa,[76] and for the Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music.

He performed with the Arditti, Tokyo, JACK and Alexander String Quartets, with the harpsichordist George Malcolm; jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in Lisbon, Paris, for the Patras Festival, and for extensive tours of the UK Contemporary Music Network from 1986 to 1994.

He worked with musicologists Charles Rosen, Paul Griffiths, H. C. Robbins-Landon, Richard Toop, Paul M. Ellison, Nouritza Matossian and Sharon Kanach; violinists Philippe Hirschhorn and Ivry Gitlis; violist James Creitz [de]; cellists Rohan de Saram and Nathan Waks;  flautist Pierre Yves- Artaud; pianists: Yuji Takahashi, David Tudor, Alexander Gavrylyuk and Robert Curry; with James Morrison, the ceremonial dancer David Gulpilil (Dalaithngu), with the composers Frank Zappa and Phillippe Sarde.

Throughout the 1980s he dedicated himself to the Polish Solidarność Movement with performances of the complete works of Chopin to raise awareness of the importance of Poland's freedom struggle.