Sinfonia Australis is an Australian early music ensemble founded by Antony Walker and Alison Johnston. [1] They play on period instruments. [2] They were founded alongside vocal ensemble Cantillation and the Orchestra of the Antipodes. Along with Gerard Willems received a nomination for the 2004 ARIA Award for Best Classical Album with their album Beethoven Complete Piano Concertos.
Sinfonia Australis often performs with the Pinchgut Opera and appear on many ABC Classics albums. Albums they appear on include David Hobson's Handel Arias and Shu-Cheen Yu's Lotus Moon, both ARIA nominees.
Trevor David Pinnock is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
The 18th Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards were held on 17 October 2004 at the Sydney Superdome within the Sydney Olympic Complex. The ceremony, hosted by Rove McManus and produced by Roving Enterprises for Network Ten, was held for the first time on a Sunday night and averaged 1.39 million viewers. The 2004 ARIA Fine Arts Awards had been presented at a ceremony weeks earlier.
Stephanie McCallum is a classical pianist. She has recorded works of Erik Satie, Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Carl Maria von Weber, Albéric Magnard, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis among others.
Saffire or Saffire: The Australian Guitar Quartet were an Australian classical music group, which formed in 2002. It consisted of four guitarists Anthony Field, Slava Grigoryan, Gareth Koch and Karin Schaupp. Leonard Grigoryan, Slava's younger brother, replaced Field in 2005. The members also worked as solo performers and in other ensembles. Their debut album, Saffire: The Australian Guitar Quartet, was released in June 2003, which peaked at No. 46 on the ARIA Albums Chart and No. 1 on the related ARIA Classical Chart. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2003 it won the Best Classical Album category. They released two more albums, Nostálgica and Renaissance before disbanding in 2007.
The Contemporary Singers of Australia were a chamber choir based in Sydney, New South Wales, dedicated to the choral music of the 20th century. The group was formed in late 1986 by visiting Canadian composer David Colwell with assistance from the University of Sydney and the NSW State Conservatorium of Music. Colwell directed the Singers for their first year, passing the leadership to Antony Walker and Elliott Gyger, who directed the Singers until 1999. Many of the original members were composition students of Peter Sculthorpe including Stephen Adams, Matthew Hindson, and Canadian composer Jana Skarecky.
Pinchgut Opera is a chamber opera company in Sydney, Australia, presenting opera from the 17th and 18th centuries performed on period instruments. Founded in 2002, Pinchgut stages two operas each year in Sydney's City Recital Hall. It also performs concerts in both Sydney and Melbourne.
David Hobson is an Australian opera tenor and composer.
Richard Leo Tognetti AO is a leading Australian musician recognised internationally as a violin soloist, ensemble player, leader, composer and arranger, conductor and artistic director.
Sara Macliver is an Australian soprano singer, born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. Macliver is one of Australia’s most popular and versatile artists, appearing in operas, concert and recital performances and on numerous recordings. She is regarded as one of the leading exponents of Baroque repertoire in Australia, and lectures in Voice at the UWA Conservatorium of Music.
Teddy Tahu Rhodes is a New Zealand operatic baritone.
William Hayes was an English composer, organist, singer and conductor.
Gerard Willems AM is a Dutch- Australian classical pianist and teacher. He was the first Australian pianist to record the complete series of 32 piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. He also recorded Beethoven's five piano concertos, the Diabelli Variations, C minor variations, Andante favori, Für Elise and the 3 Electoral "Kurfürstensonaten" sonatas as well as a reconstructed "Fantasy Sonata in D". These recordings feature the Australian designed and manufactured Stuart & Sons piano. This series of recordings constitutes the largest classical music recording project ever undertaken in Australia, and Willems became the best selling classical artist in Australia's recording history.
Jayson Lloyd Gillham is an Australian classical pianist, based in London. In 2014, Gillham was the winner of the 2014 Montreal International Musical Competition, which brought him to international attention. His outstanding performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 was described in the Huffington Post as being played 'with such streamlined patrician elegance that he took home First Prize and a string of engagements...' The renowned British conductor Sir Mark Elder said Gillham 'plays Beethoven with a sort of ‘glow’'. In May 2015, Gillham signed a three-album deal with ABC Classics.
ABC Music is Australia's largest independent record label. It operates under the ABC Commercial division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It covers a wide range of music genres, including classical, children’s and adult contemporary music, blues, roots, rock, and Australian country music. Its imprints include ABC Classics and FOUR FOUR.
Sinfonia da Camera is a professional chamber orchestra in Central Illinois. It was founded in 1984 by Ian Hobson, a noted pianist who in 1981 was awarded the First Prize in the Leeds International Piano Competition. The orchestra is composed of musicians throughout the Midwest and brings music to audiences in Central Illinois and elsewhere. In addition to performing the standard repertoire from baroque to modern music, Ian Hobson and Sinfonia da Camera frequently present compositions by composers that are performed less often and a world premiere by a contemporary composer or a newly made orchestration of an earlier work.
Arcangelo is a UK-based early music ensemble founded by Jonathan Cohen in 2010. It performs and records music from the Baroque, Classical, and early Romantic repertoire, ranging from Monteverdi to Beethoven. It is noted for its approach based on the collaborative tradition of chamber music making.
Shu Cheen Yu is a Chinese Australian opera singer. Her album Lotus Moon was nominated at the ARIA Music Awards of 2001]] for Best Classical Album.
Antony Walker is an Australian conductor who currently resides in Washington, D.C. He has held the positions of Musical Director of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Chorus Master and staff conductor of Welsh National Opera, and is currently Artistic Director and Conductor of Washington Concert Opera and Music Director of Pittsburgh Opera. He co-founded Pinchgut Opera, the vocal ensemble Cantillation and the orchestras Sinfonia Australis and Orchestra of the Antipodes. Educated at Sydney Grammar School, and an honours graduate of the University of Sydney, Walker trained as a singer (tenor), pianist, cellist, and composer.
Cantillation is an Australian vocal ensemble founded in 2001 by Antony Walker and Alison Johnston. They were founded alongside orchestras Sinfonia Australis and Orchestra of the Antipodes.
Orchestra of the Antipodes is an Australian early music ensemble founded by Antony Walker and Alison Johnston. They play baroque music on early instruments. They were founded alongside vocal ensemble Cantillation and the Sinfonia Australis orchestra. They received a nomination for the 2012 ARIA Award for Best Classical Album with their album Bach: Brandenburg Concertos.