In a volatile, exotic world where the piano becomes a battle ground, music weaves its emotive force through fragmented lives of ambition, love, betrayal and politics.

Set Against the backdrop of a 1960's jungle seaport in tropical Australia and the rich concert halls of wintry Vienna, Maestro is a story of extremes. When talented pianist, 18 yr old Paul Crabbe moves to an exotic outpost of Far Northern Australia in 1968, he is forced to learn from the only piano teacher his father can find - the eccentric, enigmatic, Herr Keller,a Viennese refugee with a shadowed past. Living above a dilapidated hotel in the dripping heat of this jungle seaport, Herr Keller is is known to the locals as 'Maestro', a broken, elegant drunkard. But who is he? Does he come from a linage of great European pianists, or is he a fraud?—Catherine Jarvis