Allyne Tilsed, known always as Lyn, studied at the Sydney Conservatorium as a pianist with Lindley Evans and Nancy Salas, and as a flautist with Victor McMahon, becoming a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra in 1962.
In 1962, Lyn won the instrumental section of the New South Wales Final of the ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition playing the flute, and in the following year, won both the Keyboard (flute)and Wind/Brass (flute) sections of the West Australian Finals.
1963
In 1963, Lyn joined the West Australian Symphony Orchestra as second flute and piccolo and she remained a member of the WASO until 1968.
During this time, she performed as a soloist with the WASO on flute, piccolo, piano and harpsichord, and was a frequent broadcaster and solo performer.
Lyn also enjoyed playing chamber music and particularly, accompanying.
CONCERT – MARCH 14th 1963
An outstanding programme by the Perth Sinfonietta will be given in Winthrop Hall at 1.10pm next Thursday under the baton of Verdon Williams. This free recital is being presented by the A.B.C. as the first in a weekly series being sponsored by the University during the year. The Sinfonietta will play works by Berger, Copland, Delius and Vaughan Williams.
The soloists will be Allyne Tilsed (flute) and Jack Harrison (clarinet).
Those attending the concert include Russian violinist Nelli Schkolniskova and W.A. resident conductor John Farnsworth Hall, who will be soloists and conductor in the first A.B.C. Youth Concert on March 19.
LUNCH MUSIC IS PROMISING – By Sally Trethowan
MARCH 14th 1963
The programme for this year’s free lunch-hour concert series held on Thursdays in Winthrop Hall is even more interesting and varied in type of music and number of performers than last year’s.
If the first concert given yesterday to a large audience by the Perth Sinfonietta, is any indication of the quality, the weekly programmes will be exciting musical experiences and a major contribution to musical life in W.A.
The Perth Sinfonietta always gives us an entertaining, thought-provoking programme. Conductor Verdon William’s introductory comments are instructive, to the point, and do not offend by being too technical or too long. The choice of composers in yesterday’s concert – Berger, Vivaldi, Copland, Delius and Vaughan Williams – leaned heavily towards the moderate, making the Vivaldi Flute Concerto (“The Goldfinch”) a pertinent, pleasant comment on, and exposition of, a more elegant and graceful age. The young flautist, Allyne Tilsed, who has just joined the W.A. Symphony Orchestra has a sureness of tone control which allows the most delicate innuendos without over or under emphasis. In Vivaldi’s “Goldfinch”, flute and strings chattered and trilled in animated conversation, whereas in the Copland Clarinet Concerto, a different symphonic relationship exists between orchestra and clarinet. Clarinettist Jack Harrison interwove the sure mellowness of tone and bell-like clarity of his instrument into the orchestral texture of the work. The brief overture of Jean Berger that began the programme and a Delius “Serenade” and Vaughan Williams “Fantasia on Greensleeves” which closed it, are works typical of the individuality of their composers, but have in common the fact that they make light and easy listening.
The West Australian March 15 1963
1965
1966
HARSH-TONED MUSIC ENTERTAINS – By Sally Trethowan
The last of the festival “Music of Britain” chamber concerts given in the Basil Kirk memorial studio last night offered some of the most complex and insistently dissonant music of the whole series. Yet each of the three works was so excellently performed that some measure of the composers musical thought in each case intense and highly individual must surely have impressed the general music lover no matter how unsympathetic he might have been to the harsh contemporary harmonic language. The first work “Quintet for wind and piano” by Alan Rawsthorne, was perhaps the most earnest in intention, and also the most abstruse and uncompromising. Much of it was concerned with working out, in terms of spasmodic tempi, unremitting dissonance and often exciting and original blends of wind colour, two moods, one apparently serene but masking disquieting emotional currents; the other desperately merry. This difficult music was persuasively presented by Alice Carrard (piano), Peter Randall (oboe), Jack Harrison (clarinet), Brian Pope (bassoon) and Neil Pierson (French horn). After this, Trevor Jones’s happy blend of whimsy lyricism and drama in his “Cantata Zoologica” was immensely entertaining. It was given a premiere late last year by the W.A. Bach Society choir and quintet and it was performed last night by the same artists except that the conductor on this occasion was Laughton Harris and the narrator was Neville Teede. Mr Harris’s cogent grasp, poetically and musically of the work was incisively conveyed through the unerring accuracy of his beat to which the choir and instrumentalists responded with brilliant execution. Mr Harris also conducted the final concerto for wind Quintet and two pianos (eight hands) by Malcolm Williamson. The wind players were joined by flautist Owen Fisenden and pianist Madame Carrard by fellow soloist Allyne Tilsed, Stephen Dornan and Michael Cole. This work exhibited complex interplay of tone colour. The finale, where the piano parts exploded in figuration of a Bartokian ferocity and aliveness was, I think, unrivalled in the festival music for sheer excitement of performance. The West Australian Wednesday March 9 1966 page 17
1966 MUSIC LOVER’S DIARY
The fourth programme in the A.B.C.’s free recitals in the Basil Kirke Studio this year will be held at 3pm tomorrow. Jack Harrison, Graham Wood, John Dean, Brian Meddemmen and Stephen Dornan will perform trios by Mozart and Shostakovich. The Kylie Club will hold its annual general meeting in the Skinner Galleries at 8.15pm next Saturday. There will be a musical programme in which the artists will be Frances Moncrieff, Allyne Tilsed and Brian Meddemmen.
1968
In 1968, Lyn entered the ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition once more, winning the keyboard section of the WA Finals and was runner – up in the Commonwealth Finals playing the harpsichord, an instrument for which she developed a great love and interest.
In 1968, Lyn resigned from the WASO, having decided that orchestral playing was no longer sufficiently engaging her interest, and moved to England. Before finally leaving the world of professional music, she obtained Licentiates on both the piano and flute from the Royal Academy of Music.
From 1969 until 1997, Lyn worked for a Charity based in England which was concerned with women and children’s education, health and social well-being. Her commitment to this cause took her to many parts of the United Kingdom, Romania, India, South Africa, Botswana and Madagascar, as well as frequent shorter visits to Italy, Belgium, Sweden and East Germany.
At the end of 1997, her deep love of her native land called her back home. She retired from the Charity and its involvement, returning to Australia where she settled in Adelaide. The piano was “dusted off” and requests to accompany advanced students at the University of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music and the TAFE School of Music soon followed.
In 2002, following her husband Patrick Brislan’s retirement from the Elder Conservatorium, they moved to the Central Coast of NSW. The Central Coast Conservatorium was in need of accompanists, and Lyn quickly became established in the area, continuing to work with students for another twelve years. She also returned to teaching the flute at the request of the Director at the Conservatorium; this she did for ten years, finding great enjoyment in her students’ progress and developing careers.
Lyn continued accompanying various students until retirement in 2015. She then undertook some official overseas visits with her husband Patrick, concerning international students’ placement, including to China, Korea, Taiwan and the United States.
At the request of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in Sydney, Lyn’s final performance project was recording several Australian piano compositions of the nineteenth century for the Trust’s archives. Together with her husband, she continues to maintain a connection to the local music scene through their joint involvement in adjudication of scholarships and awards, particularly for the Bouddi Foundation for the Arts. They also have a life-long commitment to the Australian Youth Orchestra.