Christine Joy Amphlett was an Australian singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the frontwoman of the rock band Divinyls. She was notable for her brash, overtly sexual persona and subversive humour in lyrics, performances and media interviews.
Eddie Perfect is an Australian singer-songwriter, pianist, comedian, writer and actor.
Simone Margaret Young AM is an Australian conductor. She is currently chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Marina Prior is an Australian soprano and actress with a career mainly in musical theatre. From 1990 to 1993, she starred as the original Christine Daaé in the Australian premiere of The Phantom of the Opera, opposite Anthony Warlow and later Rob Guest.
Richard John Mills is an Australian conductor and composer. He is currently the artistic director of Victorian Opera, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera Batavia (2001).
Cheryl Ruth Barker is an Australian operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the late 1980s. She has sung on several complete opera recordings with Chandos Records, including the title roles in Dvořák's Rusalka, Janáček's Káťa Kabanová and Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Emilia Marty in Janáček's The Makropulos Case. She has also made two solo recordings of opera arias, one with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor David Parry and the other with Orchestra Victoria and conductor Richard Bonynge. On the stage she has had partnerships with the English National Opera (ENO) and Opera Australia.
Michael James Thomas is an Australian singer-songwriter, producer, guitarist and hotelier. Thomas was the frontman of folk rock group Weddings Parties Anything (1984–1998), and leader of Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing. He has also released material as a solo artist.
Melissa Morrison Higgins, stage name Missy Higgins, is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician. Her Australian number-one albums are The Sound of White (2004), On a Clear Night (2007) and The Ol' Razzle Dazzle (2012), and her singles include "Scar", "Steer" and "Where I Stood". Higgins was nominated for five ARIA Music Awards in 2004 and won 'Best Pop Release' for "Scar". In 2005, she was nominated for seven more awards and won five. Higgins won her seventh ARIA in 2007. Her third album, The Ol' Razzle Dazzle, was released in Australia in June 2012. As of August 2014, Higgins' first three studio albums had sold over one million units.
Roslyn Louise Bygrave is an Australian singer-songwriter.
Kate Melina Miller-Heidke is an Australian singer and songwriter. Although classically trained, she has generally followed a career in alternative pop music. She signed to Sony Australia, Epic in the US and RCA in the UK, but since 2014 has been an independent artist. Four of her solo studio albums have peaked in the top 10 of the ARIA Albums Chart, Curiouser, Nightflight, O Vertigo! and Child in Reverse. Her most popular single, "The Last Day on Earth", reached No. 3 on the ARIA Singles Chart after being used in promos for TV soap, Neighbours, earlier in that year. At the ARIA Music Awards Miller-Heidke has been nominated 17 times.
Robyn Archer, AO, CdOAL is an Australian singer, writer, stage director, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts, in Australia and internationally.
In 2005 FremantleMedia Australia producer Jason Stephens brought the idea of a television series called the Choir of Hard Knocks to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In an interview on Australian Story by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Stephens said "I'd always been quite fascinated by choirs. Living in Melbourne during that time 2005 the homelessness problem was more obvious, I guess. And I kind of thought it would be interesting to put those two ideas together to see if we could make a choir out of homeless and disadvantaged people." The ABC and Fremantle chose Reclink, a charity that had worked with homeless people in the past, as the charity that would work with the television construct and cast the choir conductor Jonathon Welch.
Jacqueline Lisa Dark was an Australian operatic mezzo-soprano who appeared mainly with Australian companies, for a while as a member of Opera Australia. She was known for her voice in leading roles, including world premieres, but also for her stage presence and "a unique sense of comic timing".
Margret RoadKnight is an Australian singer-guitarist. In a career spanning more than five decades, she has sung in a wide variety of styles including blues, jazz, gospel, comedy, cabaret, and folk. In January 1976 she released a cover version of Bob Hudson's album track, "Girls in Our Town", as a single, which reached the Kent Music Report Singles Chart Top 40.
Paul Atherstone Grabowsky is an Australian pianist and composer, founder of the Australian Art Orchestra.
Antoinette Halloran is an Australian operatic soprano.
Annette Gale Edwards is an Australian theatre director, who has worked extensively throughout Australia and internationally. She has also directed for television and film.
The ARIA Music Award for Best World Music Album, is an award presented within the Fine Arts Awards at the annual ARIA Music Awards. It was inaugurated in 1995 as Best Folk/World/Traditional Release. The ARIA Awards recognise "the many achievements of Aussie artists across all music genres", and have been given by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) since 1987.
Shortis and Simpson are an Australian entertainment and political satire duo composed of John Damien Shortis and Moya Simpson. They are singers, composers, political satirists and cabaret artists as well as producers and writers of wide-ranging performance genres. John Shortis is a satirist, singer, songwriter, composer, social historian, and political commentator. Moya Simpson is a singer and actor, and choir director. She immigrated to Australia in 1978. Their work includes, Under the influence which was a music theatre production in 2023.
Eureka is an Australian musical with music by Michael Maurice Harvey, book and lyrics by Gale Edwards and John Senczuk and original book and lyrics by Maggie May Gordon. The musical is set in Victoria during the Eureka Rebellion of 1854, covering the tensions between immigrant gold miners from many cultures and the British colonial authorities. The original Australian production played in Melbourne in 2004 at Her Majesty's Theatre. It was nominated for the Helpmann Award for Best Musical in 2005.
