Since arriving in the UK in 1999, Seckou Keita has been on an epic creative journey that has seen him broaden the idiomatic scope of his instrument as well as spread his wings, literally and figuratively.

Nicknamed "the Hendrix of the Kora", Seckou has been celebrated for his ingenious tunings and virtuosity and praised as "one of the finest exponents of the kora". Performing all over the globe as a solo artist and with his ground-breaking quintet, he has captivated audiences at WOMAD, Hay, Glastonbury, Tokyo Jazz, Chicago World Music Festival, Sydney International, Montreal Jazz Festivals and many more places.

Acclaimed collaborations with numerous jazz, pop, Latin, folk and classical artists, notably include Damon Albarn & the Africa Express; Welsh harpist Catrin Finch; Cuban pianist Omar Sosa; AKA trio with Italian guitarist Antonio Forcione and Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale; Paul Weller and the Folk Collective; The Lost Words, Spell Songs (2019) joined by the words of Robert McFarlane and artwork of Jackie Morris. Since 2007, he has had several opportunities to perform with classical ensembles including Orchestre National de Bretagne, which has spurred him towards his dream of leading an orchestral work specifically for the kora.  

Overall, Seckou has released 11 albums as a leader and co-leader. Through this work, he has earned numerous accolades including three Songlines Music Awards, and several BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, including 2019 Musician of the Year.

"I don't know if I'm a folk musician, a jazz or a world one," he said at the time. "Forget about categories. My music is just music for the soul."

Internationally praised for his breathtaking virtuosity and versatile musicianship, Scottish born James Crabb is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading classical accordionists. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen with accordion pioneer Mogens Ellegaard. James became professor there from 1995 until 2010, and was awarded the prestigious Carl Nielsen Music Prize, Denmark in 1991. He also held a long-standing guest professorship at the University in Graz, Austria. James.

James has collaborated with some of the most important composers of the last 50 years including Sofia Gubaidulina, Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, Sally Beamish, Luciano Berio and has premiered countless concertos, chamber music and solo works dedicated to him. He is also recognised internationally as an authority on the music of Astor Piazzolla and was invited to curate the inaugural Piazzolla Festival in Buenos Aires in 2016. In 2019 James gave the world premiere of Brett Dean’s accordion concerto The Players in Sweden, (recorded on the BIS label). He has also featured in the on-stage role in Dean’s opera Hamlet with Cologne Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Glyndebourne and the Adelaide Festival, a role he reprised for Opera Australia in 2024. Further projects next year will see James also return to the ACO, numerous music festivals in Australia and the UK and once again collaborate with the Australia Ensemble.

James has recorded for several labels including Chandos, EMI Classics, BIS, ABC Classics, Simax, Dacapo.

A passionate and sought-after music educator and mentor, James collaborates regularly with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian National Academy of Music, Freedman Fellowship Trust, Australian Youth Orchestra, Musica Viva as well as music conservatories and universities in Australia and abroad. He was Artistic Director of the Four Winds Festival in Bermagui, NSW, from 2016 – 2020 during which time he curated both the annual Easter and inaugural Youth Festivals and developed the music education programs in local schools.

Praised for her “vibrant musical personality” (Harp Column Magazine) and hailed by ABC Classic as a "queen of contemporary classical performance in Australia," American-Australian harpist Emily Granger has built a reputation as one of the most compelling harpists of her generation. Appointed Principal Harp of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 2023 and a core member of Ensemble Q, she has captivated audiences worldwide in performances as Guest Principal Harpist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Orchestra Victoria, and Opera Australia Orchestra.

A consummate soloist and refined chamber musician, Emily has given sold out recitals at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Recital Centre, to the UKARIA Cultural Centre. 

Deeply committed to the evolution of contemporary music, Emily has actively commissioned and premiered nearly 100 new works for harp by composers such as Ross Edwards, Elena Kats-Chernin, Holly Harrison, Alice Chance, Anne Boyd, Tristan Coelho, Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, and Bernard Andrés. Her championing of new music was recognised as a Finalist in the 2021 Art Music Awards for her performance of Ross Edwards’ The Harp and The Moon and as a Finalist in the 2022 Freedman Classical Fellowship Awards.

Her debut solo album, In Transit (AVIE Records), earned international accolades— lauded by BBC Music Magazine as “beautiful” and by Limelight Magazine as “an impressive debut.” She followed this success with Something Like This (with flautist Sally Walker), Magic Sky (for the HUSH Foundation, with percussionist Claire Edwardes), and Suite Mágica (ABC Classic, with guitarist Andrew Blanch) – the latter debuting at the #1 spot on the ARIA Classical Chart. Every one of her albums has been honored as a Feature Album on ABC Classic FM and her recordings have amassed over 6.5 million streams globally. 

Granger’s performance highlights include collaborations with Orava Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Sydney Dance Company, Omega Ensemble, Flinders Quartet, Nexas Quartet, and Sydney Art Quartet, with engagements for the Melbourne Recital Centre, Musica Viva Australia, Sydney Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Orange Chamber Music Festival and more.

Emily grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and completed her Bachelor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University under Susann McDonald, later earning her Master of Music at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts with Sarah Bullen. Following her studies, she served as Principal Harpist in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and co-founded the Chicago Harp Quartet in 2012.

In addition to her performance career, Emily is dedicated to the next generation of harpists. She serves on the faculty of the University of Queensland and the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and is the recently elected President of the Harp Society of Queensland. She has delivered masterclasses at New York University, Indiana University, The University of Minnesota, University of Kansas, the Harp Society of Queensland, and FNQ Harp Connect, and has taught at the Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp and Interlochen Arts Center.

Emily is represented by Tier 1 Arts.

Claire Edwardes OAM is Australia's ‘sorceress of percussion’ (City News, Canberra) and the only Australian to win the 'APRA Art Music Luminary Award’ four times. A charismatic percussion virtuosi, Claire leaps between her role as Ensemble Offspring’s Artistic Director (Australia’s leading new music ensemble), solo recitals and concerto performances with all of the Australian symphony orchestras including recent premieres of works by Anne Cawrse, Natalie Williams and Iain Grandage. In 2022 Claire was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her indelible contribution to Australian music and in 2023 she was the recipient of the Australian Women in Music Award for Creative Leadership.  

Recently described in Limelight as a ‘unique treasure of Australia’s musical community’ and in The Age as ‘an invigorating musical life force’, Claire has hosted Play School, been an ARIA Award finalist twice and has performed as a soloist all over the world – from Vancouver to Amsterdam, the Gold Coast to Malta, and Huddersfield to Alice Springs. Widely known for her genre-spanning solo concerts, plus commissioning and premiering hundreds of new works for marimba, vibraphone, drums and more unusual instruments such as the waterphone, she passionately advocates for gender equity and diversity in all that she undertakes. As a true trailblazer Claire breaks down barriers between art music and audiences with her famous on-stage infectious enthusiasm for bringing new music to new audiences.

Violinist and composer Simone Slattery is one of Australia's most versatile young musicians and creators, with a passion for music from a wide range of eras. She performs across Australia and internationally as both soloist and ensemble member, holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide, and was a 2019 Churchill Fellow. Simone has collaborated with artists and ensembles in Japan, Korea, the UK, Canada, the USA and throughout Europe, and has toured extensively across regional Australia. Her performances have been reviewed as "virtuosic" and "infinitely expressive". She has appeared with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Australian Haydn Ensemble, Ironwood, Pinchgut Opera, Van Diemen's Band and New Vintage Baroque.

A co-founder of the award-winning Bowerbird Collective, Simone's compositions have been performed across the world, and her artistic creations described as "stunning". Recent productions include Where Song Began, Invisible Connections, and the World Migratory Bird Day Virtual Choir. Simone was commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia to create the soundscape for 'Clarice Beckett - The Present Moment', an acclaimed retrospective of one of Australia's greatest artists, in early 2021.

Having begun on viola in his hometown Whyalla, Neil Thompson's career has taken him all around the world, including to Europe as soloist. Neil has performed and toured with the Adelaide, Melbourne, Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony Orchestras (upon holding an SSO fellowship in 2012), as well as with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and its sister orchestra ACO2 (currently ACO Collective) with whom he was an ‘Emerging Artist’.

His stylistic diversity allowed him to enjoy two years of touring with ‘The Cat Empire’ and features as soloist and guest artist on their DVD ‘Live at the Bowl’. Neil regularly performs at the Sydney Opera House with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra for Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet.

Primarily involved in playing chamber-music, he has been fortunate enough to have performed many world and Australian premieres and to have shared the stage with Pekka Kuusisto, Kristian Winther, Richard Tognetti, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Simone Young, Brett Dean, Lisa Moore and others to name a few. Since 2015 Neil has been Principal Viola of the highly acclaimed Omega Ensemble, as well as co-director of 'The Nano Symphony' - www.thenanosymphony.com

With previous conducting mentors including Richard Gill, Keith Crellin, Christopher Seaman and John Hopkins, Neil is currently director-conductor of Killara High’s Orchestras with whom he frequently hosts ‘feeder’ primary school workshops and events. He has also conducted the Mosman Symphony Orchestra and the Eastern Sydney Chamber Orchestra.

A passionate advocate for music education, Neil is a tutor for the ACO Penrith Youth Strings program, The Arts Unit and Sydney Youth Orchestra. 2015 saw him tutoring School Spectacular, Mid-North Coast Strings Alliance, senior state music camp (NSW) as well as many other school and organisation’s’ orchestras and/or camps.

Neil studied on full scholarship at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) studying under Christopher Moore and Roger Benedict, and holds a Bachelor of Music in Performance (Honours) from the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide having studied under Keith Crellin.

With an international performance and production career, Anthony Albrecht has developed a reputation as an impresario of world-class events characterised by generosity, outreach and connection to issues of social justice, conservation and sustainability. He is co-founder and CEO of the Bowerbird Collective, an organisation devoted to forging stronger connections to the natural world. With a passion for making classical music accessible and relevant in the 21st century, cellist Anthony Albrecht began producing concerts shortly after graduating from The Juilliard School in 2014. Committed to musical outreach, Anthony has undertaken a self-managed solo tour of over 80 concerts in regional Australia called 'Bach to the Bush'. He is founder and director of the Lapwing Music Festival in the UK.

A musician known for his "dramatic flair" and "fluent and virtuosic" performances (Seen and Heard International, Sydney Morning Herald), he has appeared with Pinchgut Opera, Van Diemen's Band, the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, the Australian Haydn Ensemble, New Vintage Baroque (NYC) and Il Pomo d'Oro. Recent solo engagements include an appearance in the woods of East Sussex as a guest of Sam Lee's 'Singing with Nightingales' project, a recital at the Handel and Hendrix House in London, a performance of Haydn's Cello Concerto in D at the Newcastle Music Festival and as concerto soloist with the Adelaide Baroque Orchestra.

María Eugenia Nieva began musical studies at the age of six at a specialist music school, the Niños Cantores de Mendoza. She soon joined the choir and by the age of nine was performing throughout Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina as both soloist and chorus member. She pursued Choral Conducting in Mendoza, before relocating to Buenos Aires to study musical theater, and classical singing at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes.  

She has performed as a soloist with orchestras, sung with the Bach Akademie choir in Germany, and obtained a postgraduate degree in Higher Education Pedagogy from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.  Passionate about education, she has worked as a vocal coach for various choirs, including a children's choir at a hospital in Mendoza, using music as a tool for community outreach. She has toured the USA, performing more than 70 concerts in 2024 and 2025 with guitarist Andrew Blanch.

Praised as a “rockstar of nylon-acoustic music” (On Sounds), “the real deal” (Classics Today), “dazzling” (ArtsHub) and “brilliant” (Limelight Magazine), Andrew Blanch is regarded as one of Australia’s leading musicians and is at the forefront of a new wave of classical musicians internationally.   He is a prizewinner in more than ten international guitar competitions, a finalist for Performance of the Year at the 2022 Australian Art Music Awards, and has released three studio albums to critical acclaim – his latest, a collaboration with QSO principal harpist Emily Granger has been streamed more than a million times and described as “one of the most extraordinary albums to come out of Australia in a long time” (Sydney Arts Guide). 

A versatile collaborator, Andrew has performed widely with various groups such as Ensemble Offspring, the New Zealand Guitar Quartet, and in smaller chamber groups with some of Australia’s leading musicians.  In addition Andrew has commissioned and premiered works by numerous leading Australian composers such as Elena Kats-Chernin and Daniel Rojas, whose Guitar Concerto No. 1 he recorded in São Paulo, Brazil in 2023.  Andrew is an associate artist of the Bowerbird Collective with whom he developed his solo multimedia concert Nocturnal, for acoustic and electric guitars and tours regularly with his partner Argentinian Mezzo-Soprano Maria Eugenia Nieva having just completed a 40 concert tour of the USA from Washington to Florida for more than 10,000 people.  

Andrew is Vice-President of the Classical Guitar Society Sydney, is managed by Tier 1 Arts, plays a 2014 Greg Smallman and Sons guitar, and is sponsored by Augustine Strings and Schertler audio equipment.  He is a founding member and co-artistic director of the Australian Guitar Quartet with Slava and Leonard Grigoryan and Vladimir Gorbach.

Sydney/Eora-based saxophonist Alice Morgan is one of Australia's leading young saxophonists, performing regularly across Australia and New Zealand in a variety of genres.

In 2024, Alice is Ensemble Offspring’s Hatched Associate Artist and will perform in several of their concerts for their 2024 season. In November, Alice will premiere and record a new work by Holly Harrison commissioned by Ensemble Offspring to be performed in the Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House. Earlier this year Alice performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as Guest Principal Saxophone. She is also a Casual Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and has led specialised masterclasses at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

Alice has been a past nominee for the Freedman Fellowship Classical Awards, and has performed as concerto soloist with Ensemble Apex for Ibert’s Concertino da Camera, as well as performing with the orchestra for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Simon Tedeschi and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Alice performed her own transcription of Strauss' Oboe Concerto in a solo recital at the 2018 Melbourne International Saxophone Festival. Through her university years Alice performed as orchestral soloist with the Australian Youth Orchestra and Sydney Youth Orchestras. She was also selected to perform in the Estivo Chamber Music Festival in Verona, Italy, as soprano saxophonist in her saxophone quartet, Luxum.

Additional to her freelance career Alice is a keen orchestral manager and music administrator. She works at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as an Administration Officer and assists with various administrative tasks across the university, including but not limited to liaising with academics and producing high profile events. Alice is also on the board of Ensemble Apex and has regularly assisted as their Orchestral Manager since their conception in 2016.

She is an Associate Artist of the Bowerbird Collective.

A mountains local, Bronwyn Kirkpatrick began her shakuhachi journey with Grand Master Riley Lee in 1997, after completing a Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet performance with Distinction. Captivated by the sound, Bronwyn studied with Riley for the
next seven years and was then very fortunate to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship and an Australia Council Skills and Arts Development Grant, which enabled her to further her studies with Masters in Japan. Bronwyn has performed with the Bell Shakesepeare Theatre Company and TaikOz and at festivals nationally and internationally, including the
World Shakuhachi Festival, the OzAsia Festival, Sydney Sacred Music Festival and the Four Winds Festival. Bronwyn is an active teacher of the shakuhachi in the Blue Mountains, Sydney and around the world via Skype and also composes for the instrument. The lonely sound of the single bamboo captivates and draws the listener in to a secret world.

www.bronwynkirkpatrick.com

Jane Sheldon is an Australian-American vocal performer. Her 2022 album, I am a tree, I am a mouth (“conceptually brilliant… a vocal and compositional triumph, beautifully realised with splendid restraint” - Limelight Magazine), was listed in the New Yorker’s Notable Recordings of 2022. Her latest album, Flowermuscle, came out in June 2025 on Badabing Records.

Praised by the New York Times for singing “sublimely”, the Sydney Morning Herald for “a brilliant tour de force”, and The Australian for “mesmerising emotional truth”, Jane has established an international reputation for highly specialized contemporary opera and art music for voice. She is an Artistic Associate at Sydney Chamber Opera.

Jane’s compositional work includes electronic music, chamber music, opera installations, works for dance companies, and large-scale sound installations for museums. Described as “riveting” (New York Times) and “gripping” (Financial Times), Jane’s compositions focus on the experience of altered or transformative states of being.

She has also worked extensively with other composers as they create new works for voice, including touring the globe with John Zorn from 2012-2017. She has sung at the Louvre, the Barbican, the Guggenheim, and the Sydney Opera House, and performed at international arts festivals such as Lincoln Center Festival, Sydney Festival, Jerusalem Sacred Music Festival, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Prototype Festival, Holland Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Resonant Bodies Festival, and Tokyo Festival. Recent performances include the Australian premiere of Mary Finsterer's Antarctica at Sydney Festival with ASKO|Schönberg and Sydney Chamber Opera; the world premiere of Dylan Mattingly's Stranger Love for the LA Phil; I am a tree, I am a mouth at New York's MATA Festival; and the world premiere of Jack Symonds' Gilgamesh for Sydney Chamber Opera and Opera Australia.

Jane holds a PhD in Music Composition from the University of Sydney. In October 2025 she will be Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions, researching sound in ritual practice.