SOPRANO

Bonnie de la Hunty is a soprano specialising in Baroque and Classical repertoire, art song, and folk song. A graduate of Early Music studies at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, Netherlands; Masters at Royal Academy of Music, London; and WAAPA, Perth; she has also been a concert and operatic soloist with companies including the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Bach Akademie Australia, Perth Symphony Orchestra, Freeze Frame Opera, Lost and Found Opera, Adelaide Baroque, Australian Baroque, Denmark Baroque, WASO Chorus, the UWA Choral Society, and Perth Symphonic Chorus. Bonnie has given song recitals in the Netherlands, France, UK and Australia, and sings in vocal ensembles including St George’s Cathedral Consort, Giovanni Consort, The Song Company, and previously Polyphony (UK).

CELLO, VIOLA DA GAMBA

Since graduating from studies at the University of Western Australia, Krista Low has pursued a varied career in historically informed performance, contemporary music and everything in between. As an undergraduate, she was awarded the Pauline Steele Memorial Prize for Solo Cello, the Margaret Bello Prize for Chamber Music and a Wesley Mission Scholarship. She subsequently received a University Postgraduate Award to undertake a Masters in Music at UWA under the supervision of Dr Suzanne Wijsman which she completed in 2015. Krista has participated in masterclasses and festivals in Canada, France and the Netherlands and appears frequently as a solo, chamber and orchestral musician on both Baroque and modern cello, and viola da gamba.

VIOLIN

Sarah Papadopoulos studied Music at the University of Western Australia, graduating in 2016 with First Class Honours in Baroque Performance under the guidance of Paul Wright, Shaun Lee-Chen and Suzanne Wijsman. In Europe, Sarah has performed with Holland Baroque as a Samama fellow in 2022 /2023, the Northern Consort, in the Urbino Early Music Festival, the Academy of Ancient Music in Bruneck, the Apollo Ensemble Summer Academy, and the Juilliard at the Piccolo Academia in Montisi. She performs on modern and Baroque violin with Western Australian orchestras including Australian Baroque, the WA Philharmonic Orchestra, Perth Symphony Orchestra, Perth Chamber Orchestra, and Fremantle Chamber Orchestra.

HARPSICHORD

James Huntingford is a performer on both modern and historical keyboard instruments, including piano, fortepiano and harpsichord. James has performed as soloist with Perth Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Canberra Youth Orchestra, The National Capital Orchestra and Musica da Camera Chamber Orchestra. In 2009, James was the winner of the Austrian Embassy's Haydn Festival Competition, and he is a two-time winner of the ACT's National Eisteddfod Open Piano Recital. In 2013 James was awarded the Australian Society of Music Educators' Lady Callaway Award for his diverse musical and artistic services to the Canberra community. In 2016 he moved to Perth, where he has since completed both an Honours year and a Master of Arts degree at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), specialising in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century historical keyboard performance and research.

VIOLIN

Eliza McCracken is in demand as a freelance violinist, having performed with various ensembles including the WA Symphony Orchestra, WA Philharmonic, and Perth Symphony Orchestra. Eliza holds a Bachelor of Music with Honours from the University of Western Australia, having studied modern and baroque violin with Paul Wright, Semra Lee and Shaun Lee-Chen. During her Undergraduate degree, Eliza won the Flora Bunning Award for Chamber Music and the VOSE Memorial Prize. Eliza has performed as part of the Urbino Early Music Festival, the Academy of Ancient Music in Bruneck and the Apollo Ensemble Summer Academy in the Netherlands. Eliza was the Artistic Administrator for the Australian Youth Orchestra from 2019-2023, and currently enjoys balancing her playing and teaching commitments with her role as Artist Manager for one of Australia’s leading classical artist agencies, Emblem Artists.

PERCUSSION

Jet Kye Chong is an award-winning Perth-based composer, percussionist and researcher. His music has been performed throughout Australia, Asia, Canada and the USA, premiered by the Flinders Quartet (VIC), Perth Symphony Orchestra, the Irwin St Collective, and members of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Australian National Academy of Music among others. He has recorded works of Myburgh for Australian and UK labels, recorded with Australian Baroque for ABC Classic, produced 5-star award-winning Fringe World shows in 2022 and 2023, toured nationally with the Momentum Ensemble, and internationally as Principal Percussion with the Australian Youth Orchestra.

Chong holds a Bachelor of Philosophy in Mathematics and Statistics, and Music Specialist Studies (Composition/Percussion), with First Class Honours. His research thesis 'Predicting Marimba Stickings with Neural Networks' won the 2020 Dr Vincent Harry Cooper Memorial Prize, the 2022 Statistical Society of Australia Louise Ryan Best Presentation Award, and was recently published in the Australasian Joint Conference in AI proceedings. Chong performs as a freelance percussionist, taiko drummer, bodhrán player with traditional Irish band The Hár, keys player, and conductor of the WA Medical Students Orchestra.

HARPSICHORD, ORGAN

Stewart Smith is one of the most active organists and harpsichordists in Australia. He has performed at international festivals and in venues throughout the southern hemisphere and in Europe, and in the recent past has performed with the Hilliard Ensemble, I Fagiolini, the Orchestra of the Antipodes, Pinchgut Opera, Ensemble Arcangelo, Ensemble Batistin, The West Australian Symphony Orchestra, The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Festival Baroque, The Australian Haydn Ensemble and the St. George’s Cathedral Consort, and is the organist of Christ Church Claremont. A five-CD set of French Baroque music on the ABC Classics label has recently been re-released internationally, and has won plaudits from the international press.

Stewart studied performance and musicology at the Royal Academy of Music and at London University, and graduated with first-class honours, a master’s degree, two performance diplomas and many prizes. He has recorded fifteen CDs and has performed many times for ABC radio and television. Stewart is a Senior Lecturer in Classical Music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

THEORBO, LUTE

Matthew Jones began learning lute instruments auto-didactically in Perth in the 1990s. In 2002 he received an MMus in lute performance from the GSMD, London, and worked for the King’s Consort and Batignano Opera in Italy. Moving to Berlin in 2003, and specialising in theorbo and baroque guitar, Matt worked for major European orchestras such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, performed in diverse chamber music groups, e.g. in duo with Nadja Zwiener (Baroque violin), accompanied song and opera, and performed solo recitals on the theorbo, also with harpsichord or organ accompaniment. Back in Perth, he is researching for a PhD at WAAPA with a focus on the theorbo in early 17th century Italy and the creation of emergent music using the theorbo with electronic music. Later in 2024, he will release both recordings of solo 17th century theorbo music using historical principles and techniques, as well as of a new work for bass clarinet, theorbo and electronics with Lindsay Vickery.

HARPSICHORD, ORGAN

An accomplished keyboardist, Michael Lukin (harpsichordist, organist, and founding member) is currently studying a Master of Music in Conducting at Yale University in the USA, as a Postgraduate Fulbright Scholar. Michael holds an AMusA in piano performance, and an AMusA and LMusA in organ performance from the Australian Music Examinations Board, winning the A. J. Leckie Memorial Award for the best diploma candidate in WA in 2015. Having served as the Assistant Organist of St George’s Cathedral from 2016-2019, Michael graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2019 with a Bachelor of Music with first-class honours where he specialised in historical keyboard performance with Stewart Smith and Geoffrey Lancaster.

FLUTE

Andy Skinner studied a Bachelor of Performance at The Conservatorium of Music, as a modern Flute player some 20 years ago. Returning to Perth in 2015 from living abroad in Europe Andy’s focus shifted to Baroque. Under the Tutelage of Internationally renowned Baroque Flautist Georgia Browne, He has performed with The Early Music ensemble of St George’s College, Besozzi soloists, Telemann players, Australian Baroque and in Master Classes at the Mulin de Carjac in France. Andy plays a copy of a 1730 four-part Quantz flute by French maker Jean Meltzer.

FLUTE

Robin Hillier’s early attraction to the baroque flute, its music, sound and techniques, took him from studies at UWA, to a master of Baroque Flute at Melbourne University and a Potter Foundation scholarship for further study in Germany. He has performed in Melbourne’s Autumn Music Festival and the Sydney Fringe Festival and been recorded by Tall Poppies and the ABC. Since returning to Perth, Robin has established himself as a leader in both practice and research and has recently been involved in a project to develop a better copy of Frederick the Great’s flute with the renowned Canadian maker, Jean-François Beaudin. He now delights in sharing his passion for early music and the baroque flute with students and audiences in Perth.

FLUTE

Jonty Coy is studying his Masters in Early Music at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, Netherlands, thanks to the generous support of Gandel Philanthropy and the General Sir John Monash Foundation. Jonty graduated from the University of Western Australia with a BPhil (Hons) majoring in music performance, receiving numerous scholarships and awards there including the David Tunley Music Scholarship, the Lady Callaway Medal for Music and the St. George's College Clough Music Scholarship. Since 2018, he has focussed primarily on the study of traverso playing, under the tutelage of Georgia Browne and Kate Clark. Jonty plays a copy of a G.A. Rottenburgh flute (c. 1740) from the collection of Frans Brüggen, by Roberto Bando.

DOUBLE BASS, VIOLONE

Andrew Tait studied Double Bass and Violone at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (1981-85), where he obtained a Bachelor of Music Degree majoring in performance, with teacher John Gray.

Before joining WASO, Andrew was Associate Principal Bassist with the State Orchestra of Victoria for five years. In 1995 he travelled to Chicago to study with Joseph Guastafeste. In 1999, Andrew took his family to Norway where he played with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. Andrew left WASO in 2021 after 32 years, and has played with every professional Symphony orchestra in Australia as well as The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera, The Australian Haydn Ensemble, PSO and regularly plays with the NZSO.

As a keen exponent of early music, Andrew also plays the Violone and Viola da Gamba, having studied with Peter McCarthy (London) and Uli Wolff (Berlin).

Andrew’s career as a string player has been closely aligned with his development as a Luthier. Having begun his studies with Harry Vatiliotis in Sydney, Andrew won a Churchill Fellowship in 2006 to study the art of Double Bass making and restoration with Roger Dawson in London, and catalogue the collection of old Italian Double Basses in the National Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome. In 2009 Andrew won a grant from the Department for Culture and the Arts to design and build an orchestral five-stringed Double Bass under the direction of Roger Dawson. 2011 saw Andrew receive a Simon Lee scholarship to study early music performance practices and Baroque instrument building techniques in Europe and London.