Jury

Leigh Harrold is one of Australia’s busiest and most sought-after pianists, having performed extensively throughout Europe, North America, Africa and Australia as both soloist and chamber musician.  

His international reputation as a collaborative pianist has led to duos with such luminaries as Thomas Reibl, lecturer in viola at the Salzburg Mozarteum; Michael Cox, principal flautist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Gaede, ex-concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; and Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling. He has twice been awarded the Geoffrey Parsons Award for Associate Artists. He is also a founding member of the Helpmann Award-nominated Syzygy Ensemble, one of Australia’s most critically lauded and active contemporary music ensembles.  

An enthusiastic and committed teacher, speaker, and writer, Leigh has given several masterclasses around the world, and many pre- and post-concert talks. In 2013 Leigh was awarded a PhD for his research into the music of Robert Muczynski for which he received a Dean’s Commendation for Thesis Excellence, and in 2015 he was published internationally in the Liszt Society of London journal. He holds two University medals - one for Music and one for Applied Science.  

In 2023, Leigh was appointed Head of Keyboard at Camberwell Grammar School. He also holds positions on the Faculties of ANAM and the University of Melbourne.  

He lives in Hawthorn with Craig, Jory and Finnegan. 

Described as ‘Incandescent... a masterly display of skill and insight... as an apologist for contemporary music-making, you would search hard to find this young clarinettist's equal’ (The Age), clarinettist Ashley William Smith has performed as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Australia, USA Europe and Asia. He is a laureate of several the industry’s most prestigious prizes including the APRA Performance of the Year, the Music Council of Australia Freedman Fellowship, an ABC Symphony International Young Performer Award, and a Churchill Fellowship. He is recognised by the world's leading clarinet manufacturer as a Buffet-Crampon Artist. Ashley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Australia where he is the Chair of Woodwinds and Convenor of Performance Studies.

As a soloist and director he has performed alongside several international and Australian orchestras. Most notably, his performance of Lachlan Skipworth’s Clarinet Concerto with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra was awarded the APRA 2015 Performance of the Year. Ashley is the Co-Artistic Director of the Southern Cross Soloists and performs at internationally leading chamber music festivals with ensembles including the Calder, Dover, and Australian string quartets.

A graduate of Yale University, the University of Western Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian National Academy of Music, Ashley was awarded the highest honours as the most outstanding performance graduate of each institution.

Violist Caleb Wright graduated from the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide with honors under the guidance of Keith Crellin and Jeremy Williams. The following year he was accepted at the Australian Academy of Music and studied with one of Australia's foremost string pedagogues, Alice Waten. Later that year he won a position with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.  

At the start of 2009, Caleb travelled to Berlin and began private studies, mainly with Wilfried Strehle, one of the principals of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, who privately tutored Caleb and subsequently he was the runner up for a position in Berlin Philharmonic. Caleb also worked on a regular basis with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin.  

Returning in 2011 he again won a position with MSO, also playing as guest principal in the MSO and Orchestra Victoria. In 2014 he won Principal Viola with the West Australian Symphony.  In 2018 he took up the position of Principal Violist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and in 2020 he won the Principal Violist position for the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. Since the pandemic took its toll on the future of the MPO he applied and won the position of Principal with TSO and hopes to make TSO his permanent home. 

Australian violinist Doretta Balkizas recently returned to Australia as the newly appointed Lecturer in Violin at the School of Music, University of Queensland.  

Having been based in Germany from 2015-2024, Doretta leads a varied life as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. In recent seasons, she has performed, recorded and toured with the London Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and held the position of associate principal second violin with the Bremer Philharmoniker.  

Doretta has performed as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and Nanning Symphony Orchestra (China), and was a finalist in several major Australian competitions, including the 2015 Symphony Australia Young Performer Award and the Dorcas McClean Travelling Scholarship , where she was a major prizewinner and received the inaugural Fritz Kreisler Prize.  

As a chamber musician, Doretta has appeared at the theInternational Holland Music Sessions, the MusicaVivaFestival and the Yellow Barn Music Festival, where she collaborated with Roger Tapping (Juilliard String Quartet) and Donald Weilerstein. 

In 2018, Doretta received her Master of Music with distinction from the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler", Berlin, having previously completed an undergraduate degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as a student of Alice Waten. Doretta is very grateful for the many benefactors, scholarships and awards which have supported her studies, including the George & Margaret Henderson Travelling Scholarship, a scholarship from the DAAD, the Ernest V. Llewellyn Memorial Fund scholarship and a grant from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

German/ NZ cellist Edith Salzmann studied at the Music Academy in Detmold, Germany and at Indiana University Bloomington (USA). Her teachers included Janos Starker, Irene Guedel and chamber musicians Tibor Varga, Rostislav Dubinsky and Piero Farulli. 

As a chamber musician and soloist she has performed in major concert halls, such as the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonie, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Gasteig Munich, the Barbican London, and the Tonhalle, Zuerich , Lincoln Centre New York with, amongst others, Heinz Holliger, Hansjoerg Schellenberger, Christoph Poppen, Eduard Brunner, Gustav Rivinius, Menahem Pressler, Nobuko Imai, Luba Edlina, Charles Castleman and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. 

She is a recording artist for Naxos Records, Atoll Records and the Stradivarius label, Milan. Recent recordings include works by Pleyel, William Shield and Zemlinsky. 

Since 2005 she is the Artistic Director of the NZ Pettman National Junior Academy and of the International Akaroa Music Festival, an annual chamber music and masterclass festival in New Zealand. She is lecturer for cello at the Elder Conservatorium (University of Adelaide). 

Originally from New Zealand, Rachel studied cello in Christchurch, London, New York and Cologne before becoming one of Australia's best-known cellists during her 7 years in the Australian String Quartet performing for audiences across the country and in the US, UK, Asia and Europe. 

During her classical career Rachel has performed with many luminary international and Australian artists (Please see full bio online for extensive name-dropping) on stages and at festivals around the world, but has increasingly embraced teaching and performing in the non-classical sphere.  

 Highlights have included performing with legendary Australian artists and bands across folk, pop, rock and cabaret, stretching her rhetorical range through collaborations with theatre and opera projects, and working up close with living composers and multi-stylistic ensembles. 

Her passion is exploring music across various genres while celebrating its unique ability to unite, communicate and inspire through performance and teaching.  

Rachel is studying towards a PhD in the area of non-classical cello techniques and repertoire, but is on temporary hiatus due to two adorable but slightly villainous children. She lives with said creatures and partner Trent on a rural property in Majors Creek, NSW. 

Roman Ponomariov’s work as a teacher, academic, and performer is driven by a dedication to artistic excellence. He has performed with all major Australian symphony orchestras and has been recognised with multiple awards for his contributions to music and education, including Monash University’s Arts Faculty Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. 

An advocate for chamber music, Roman collaborates regularly with both local and international artists. He has recorded for 3MBS and ABC and has appeared as a soloist with ensembles, including the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. 

Since 2018, Roman has served as Coordinator of Brass and Lecturer in Classical Performance (French Horn) at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University. Beyond his university commitments, he is a dedicated mentor to young musicians, tutoring with the Australian Youth Orchestra and Melbourne Youth Orchestra, presenting guest masterclasses, and performing with Orchestra Victoria and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. 

Tim Munro is a Brisbane-based, triple-Grammy-winning musician. As a flautist, writer, broadcaster, and teacher, he treats audiences as equals, welcoming them into musical worlds with passion, intelligence and humour. He is an Associate Professor of Music at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, and is Artistic Director of the 2025 Mt Tamborine Chamber Music Festival. 

Tim was the flautist and co-Artistic Director of Eighth Blackbird from 2006-2015. He toured the US and internationally, premiering more than 100 works, co-curating festivals, playing as a concerto soloist, collaborating with artists that ran the gamut. Eighth Blackbird sought engaging, stimulating musical experiences that drew audiences close. 

In America he was St Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Creative Partner, worked often with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, University of Chicago’s Grossman Ensemble, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and many other prominent chamber and contemporary ensembles. 

Tim is committed to large-scale, immersive projects that put listeners at the centre of the musical experience. He co-directed Crowd Out Chicago, which drew a choir of 1000 untrained singers from 43 of Chicago’s 50 wards, and has premiered two large-scale, co-composed works at the BLEACH Festival. 

Tim lives in Brisbane with his wife Julie, an innovative theatre artist, and their son Ellis. 

Violist, curator and composer Katie Yap is an artist who brings people together. She uses her instrument’s role of collaborator to amplify the voices of her colleagues and audience with her own warm, authentic voice. Through deeply layered curation, she shares her music as a natural part of life, as a way to build connection in real time.  

Born in Meanjin/Brisbane and now based in nipaluna/Hobart, Katie is the 2022 Freedman Fellow, a 2023-4 Musica Viva Australia FutureMaker, a 2024-5 ANAM/Ian Potter Emerging Performer Fellow, and current Van Diemen’s Band Curation Fellow. Her focus in these projects explores a life-long fascination with improvisation, collaborative composition, and her love of the natural world. 

She absolutely loves playing chamber music, and she is a founding member of the Gryphon Baryton Trio, baroque viola/synth duo Bronzewing, and is co-artistic director of crossover folk/baroque group Wattleseed Ensemble. She was was the founding artistic director of ‘Music, She Wrote’, 3MBS’s women-in-music chamber festival. 

She plays regularly with Australia’s top ensembles including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Van Diemen’s Band and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and she also lends her excel spreadsheet-loving side to VDB as Artistic Coordinator. 

Hailed by the Daily Telegraph as “a new star…who wields his instrument with virtuosic skill and with moves you usually associate with a rock guitarist”, Matthew Kneale is one of Australia’s leading lights on the bassoon. He was the first ever bassoonist to be awarded the prestigious Freedman Classical Fellowship. Matthew used this award in late 2019 to embark on an international concert tour that aimed to shatter preconceived notions by presenting the bassoon as a brilliant solo and chamber instrument in its own right, with a strong emphasis on music by Australia’s leading young composers throughout Europe and America. Matthew is a founding member of Arcadia Winds, Australia’s leading young wind ensemble, and Musica Viva’s inaugural FutureMakers musicians. With Arcadia Winds Matthew appears as a soloist and chamber musician at festivals and venues around Australia. Matthew also performs as a casual musician with many of Australia’s leading orchestras, including the Queensland ,Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Darwin Symphony Orchestras, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Queensland Camerata and Orchestra Victoria