The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (also known as the ASO) was founded as a 17 player radio ensemble in 1936, in Adelaide, South Australia. The orchestra reformed in 1949 as the 55 member South Australian Symphony Orchestra. It reverted to its original and present title, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in 1975, and currently comprises 74 permanent members. Its music director since 2004 has been Arvo Volmer.
Slava Grigoryan is an Australian classical guitarist and recording artist. He was born in 1976 in Kazakhstan but his family emigrated to Australia in 1981 and he was raised in Melbourne. His father was a professional violinist and Grigoryan began to study guitar with him at the age of seven. By the age of twelve he was already performing professionally and he made his solo debut in Sydney at fourteen.
Yann Tiersen (born June 23, 1970 in Brest, Brittany, France) has been honing his musical aesthetic since he could stand on two legs. He started learning piano at the age of four, taking up violin at the age of six and receiving classical training at musical academies in Rennes, Nantes and Boulogne. Then, at the age of 13, he chose to alter his destiny, breaking his violin into pieces, buying a guitar and forming a rock band.
Sergey Khachatryan was born in 1985 in Yerevan, Armenia. In December 2000 he won First Prize in the VIII International Jean Sibelius competition in Helsinki, becoming the youngest ever winner in the history of the competition. In 2005 he claimed the First Prize at the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. Sergey has performed with all the major UK orchestras, including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic and regularly with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Ennio Morricone (born 10 November 1928 in Rome) is an Italian composer especially noted for his film scores. He has composed the scores of more than 500 films and TV series. Although only 30 of these are for Western films, it is for this work which he is best known. Morricone's sparse style of composition for the genre is particularly exemplified by the soundtracks of the classic spaghetti westerns The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966) and Once Upon A Time In The West (Sergio Leone, 1968).
Sophie Hutchings is Australian pianist and composer. Having begun playing piano young growing up in a musical family, Sophie started writing properly in her teens. Sophie’s compositions move from disarmingly spare and elegant beginnings to curl out with a tingling edge, propelling its austerity into urgent and epic realms. Violin, cello, drums, percussion and organ heighten the flight these pieces can take as well as dip and swell within the more dimly lit moods of gentler nuance, casting a particular spell across the range of feeling captured in Sophie’s playing.
Emerging from central Victoria, Wolfy & The Bat Cubs 60’s inspired psychedelic rock and roll has been moving dance floors around Melbourne since mid 2009. Currently recording their debut EP, the 5 piece blends 3 songwriters and lead singers (Nadine Muller on bass, Alex McMillan and Josh Lobley on electric guitar) together with Madeleine Ellis on keys and Brendan McCarthy on drums, to produce a groove-filled sound strongly influenced by early Beatles and Stones.
The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet devoted to the authentic performance of early music. Founded in 1974, the group is named after the Elizabethan miniaturist painter Nicholas Hilliard. Although most of its work focuses on music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the Hilliard Ensemble also performs contemporary music, working frequently with the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and including in its concerts works by John Cage, Gavin Bryars, Giya Kancheli, and Heinz Holliger.
Andreas Scholl (born November 10, 1967) is a countertenor, a male classical singer in the alto range. He specialises in Baroque music. His range is akin to that of the celebrated 18th century alto castrato, Senesino, for whom Georg Friedrich Händel wrote his greatest alto roles. Fanfare magazine says: "There are more excellent countertenors before the public today than ever before, but one stands out above all others, as Caruso among tenors a century ago: Andreas Scholl". In 2005, Scholl was the first countertenor ever to be invited to sing solo at The Last Night of the Proms in London.
