Sam Allchurch is the Artistic Director of the Sydney Chamber Choir. His repertoire spans the works of Bach and Handel to the music of contemporary Australian composers. He has commissioned and premiered news works by Joseph Twist, Brenda Gifford, Brooke Shelley, Elizabeth Younan and Ella Macens. Recent highlights include Mozart’s Requiem and Fireside, a jazz program, co-directed with Naomi Crellin. In 2025, he directs the choir’s 50th anniversary season, including performances of Paul Stanhope’s Requiem and JS Bach’s Mass in b minor.

Sam Allchurch is Director of Music of Christ Church St Laurence, where he conducts the choir which dates back to 1845 in weekly choral services and concert performances such as Bach’s St John Passion with the Muffat Collective. In 2024, he completed residencies with the choir at Westminster Abbey and the Thomaskirche, Leipzig. Sam is also Associate Artistic Director at Gondwana Choirs, where he works principally with the Sydney Children’s Choir. He has conducted the choir around the world and prepared it for performances with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Opera Australia.

Simon Bruckard is a conductor, pianist and composer and is Simone Young’s assistant conductor for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He has been a member of music staff with Opera Australia for the past three years and conducts regularly across Australia.

In 2022 Simon has conducted La Bohème for the State Opera of South Australia with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins for Red Line Productions, The Selfish Giant for Victorian Opera and was the assistant conductor on Turandot and Lohengrin for Opera Australia.

Simon has composed two operas for Victorian Opera. Cassandra premiered in March 2021 and his youth opera The Selfish Giant premiered to a sold-out audience in 2019. It won a Green Room Award for Musical Achievement - New Australian Opera and had a return season in May 2022.

Andrew studied music (singing & conducting) at UEA and was twice awarded the Norwich & Peterborough major performance scholarship. A prestigious Japanese Government (Monbusho) Scholarship allowed him to pursue postgraduate solo vocal studies at the Tokyo National University of Music and Fine Arts.

Appearances include lute song to gospel recitals at Kings College, Cambridge & Oriel College, Oxford; Griffin Theatre with harpist Marshall McGuire and 2by20 with Bev Kennedy at City Recital Hall; duet vocals with Chaka Khan &Sheila E (Blue Note), George Benson with the SSO at the Opera House/ TSO and Paul Mac /Lachlan Philpot’s Rise and Fall of St George.

Previously presenter & producer of Sydney Symphony Hour on 2MBS Fine Music 102.5FM, Andrew currently hosts the popular Thirsty Thursdays series at Darlinghurst Theatre Co, the new informal classical night, Looking Up-Classical from a New Perspective, and the online artists interview series, Andrew Bukenya Presents Chat & Dash!

Jim Coyle is a lecturer at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he works in the Music Education Division. He is also a constant composer and more rarely a conductor. Much of Jim’s music making is with community groups, and with teenagers and children. He is in demand as a leader of professional development for music teachers and as a mentor to young composers. Jim holds degrees from the Universities of London and Sydney and has a particular interest in British Music of the Twentieth Century.

Douglas Emery is the Senior Marketing Manager with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and is passionate about sharing the power of classical music with audiences.

Douglas completed a Bachelor of Music Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, studying cello with Susan Blake, Andrew Hines and Umberto Clerici and has worked as a freelance cellist and cello teacher. He is the third generation of his family to work for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and has experienced Sydney Symphony Orchestra performances in pretty much every way imaginable: as an audience member; backstage as a staff member; and on stage as a performer as part of the Sydney Sinfonia. Having attended many pre-concert talks over the years he is thrilled to present his first pre-concert talks for the Orchestra in 2024.

Yvonne Frindle’s background as a musician, orchestral programmer and concertgoer informs her work as a harmonious wordsmith: writing and speaking for ordinary music lovers. She loves to empower listeners and has been presenting pre-concert talks since 1997 – for the Cleveland Orchestra and Apollo’s Fire as well as appearing regularly in Sydney and Perth. She has also produced audio features for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and ABC Classic.

Her editorial and programming roles have included planning three seasons as Artistic Administrator for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and 13 years editing program books and curating the talks program for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. She is one of Australia’s most widely published writers on classical music; has edited programs for BBC Proms Australia and the Sydney Opera House’s World Orchestra series; and her editorial and design clients include the Melbourne, Canberra and St Louis symphony orchestras, Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.

A deeply passionate and imaginative performer, flautist Rosie Gallagher enjoys a varied life as a musician around the world. She performs regularly with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Yellow Barn Music Festival, St James Lunch time Concert Series and Carnegie Hall's Ensemble Connect. Her love of listening, talking and playing music is fuelled by her belief in music education, seen and practiced through her coaching of Sydney Conservatorium High School students. Currently, she is the director of Noctiluca Arts, a chamber music organisation that combines artistic excellence with community engagement.

Rosie received a Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School and a Master of Arts from The Royal Academy of Music.

Paige Gullifer is a writer and classical saxophonist based in Sydney. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Music (Honours) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Paige has been awarded both the Henderson Bequest and the Conservatorium Mobility Scholarship, which have enabled her to participate in several programs in the United States, including a winter intensive at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2023.

Paige is a regular program note and copy writer for the Adelaide and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, and has enjoyed writing for the Australian Youth Orchestra and Ensemble Apex. In 2022, Paige was a contributing writer for the She Speaks festival, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s celebration of women in music. Paige has also been published in New York Public Radio’s New Sounds, reporting on the Bang on a Can Summer Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts, where she completed a media fellowship.

As a performer, Paige has performed with the Australian Youth Orchestra, and in 2022 was a fellow with Brisbane-based Dots and Loops, a contemporary classical collective.

Andrew Howes (b.1992) is a Sydney-based composer. His works have been performed by ensembles including Enigma Quartet, the Kristian Winther Quartet, Windplay, AYO's Alexander Orchestra, AYO’s Chamber Players, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, the Sydney Camerata, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, The Song Company, Taikoz, and Moorambilla Voices, where he will be returning as a composer in residence in 2022.

After the Clifton Parker Award afforded him the opportunity to study with Alison Kay and Simon Holt at the Royal College of Music, London, he moved to New York to complete his Master’s with Susan Botti at the Manhattan School of Music, where in 2017 he won the Manhattan Prize. He currently teaches composition at the Conservatorium High School in Sydney, is the 2022 composer in residence for Live At Yours, and is an orchestrator for PremiumBeat, a Shutterstock company.

His most recent orchestral work, Luminifera - Wild Light for Orchestra, was commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for their 50 Fanfares project, and is set to be performed by the Sydney Symphony and Queensland Symphony Orchestras in 2022.

Vanessa Hughes is a broadcaster, presenting Classic Drive and the Classic Choir Hour on ABC Classic. She was raised on the music of the Czech masters, thanks to her grandmother’s excellent record collection and fell in love with choral music after a visit to the local library resulted in her borrowing a rather exotic-looking disc of Palestrina masses. She has been a choir nerd ever since. Having acquired a law degree, Vanessa decided it was useless and went into radio instead, where she has advocated for ethnic and gender diverse composers and a better funded Australian arts industry. Before moving to ABC Classic, Vanessa worked at ABC Radio Sydney.  In her spare time, Vanessa helps run Inner West Voices, a strictly non-auditioned community choir based in Sydney and volunteers for the Radio Reading Network.

Miranda Ilchef is a Sydney-based musician/writer who is in growing demand as a music reviewer and artist interviewer. She has been published in Australia’s premier classical music media outlets Limelight Magazine and Cutcommon Magazine, where she is a Lead Writer under the editorship of Stephanie Eslake. In 2022 she participated in the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Words About Music program and was mentored by Philip Sametz.

Miranda has also performed regularly as a violinist with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Project and Ensemble Apex. She has a passion for orchestral music, new music, Australian music and a burgeoning interest in Historical Performance. In 2023, her affinity for folk music led to her performing as fiddler in the musical Come From Away. Miranda graduated with Bachelor of Music Performance (Honours) in 2022 from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Professor Alice Waten, where she wrote her thesis on performance anxiety management.

Genevieve Lang is well known to Australian audiences as a harpist and broadcaster. You might well have seen her on stage with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and she’s enjoyed a long association with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. She’s also a founding member of SHE (Seven Harp Ensemble) and has performed as soloist with several orchestras around the country and overseas.

A few years ago, Genevieve became interested in writing and speaking about music and the world of music administration. Since then, she’s taken on education projects for Musica Viva, given pre-concert talks to audiences in Sydney and Hobart, led tours for Hayllar Music Tours, and worked with Pinchgut Opera, Gondwana Choirs and the Australian Youth Orchestra.

These days you’re more likely to hear her voice than her harp, as a presenter on ABC Classic. Most recently Genevieve co-hosted ABC TV’s televised broadcast with Jeremy Fernandez of the re-opening of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. For Genevieve, broadcasting and media are the perfect way to share her passion for classical music with the biggest possible audience!

David Larkin is a Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. He is a specialist in German music of the nineteenth century with a particular focus on the works of Liszt, Wagner and Richard Strauss. Beyond these, his research has encompassed topics as diverse as the Merry Widow ballet, the experimental rock band Mr. Bungle, and the reception of Beethoven’s Ninth in Australia. As well as publishing in academic journals and edited volumes, he has written for online platforms such as The Conservation and Bachtrack.

He has been a pre-concert speaker for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Musica Viva for many years, and gives regular lectures to opera societies around Sydney. As a critic, he has reviewed concerts and opera productions in Australia, Germany (including the Bayreuth festival), and elsewhere in Europe.

Alastair McKean comes from Wangaratta. He studied composition at the University of Sydney under Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards, and Anne Boyd. He was Orchestra Librarian for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for 17 years before being invited to fill the newly created post of Library Manager at the SSO in 2017. He is the current President of the Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association, the first from outside the US or Europe.

Alastair has written and spoken about music for the MSO, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, ABC Classics, and ABC Classic FM. He taught the music journalism course, Words About Music, at the Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp from 2014 to 2016.

Since 1997 Alastair has been Director of Border Music Camp, Albury. A proud viola owner, he has lowered the standard of the bass section in numerous choirs, and enjoyed scaring small children while narrating Peter and the Wolf for the MSO.

Francis Merson is a clinical psychologist and classical music educator. Born in Sydney, he studied as an operatic bass in Moscow, while working as an arts critic for Element and Vogue magazines. His attempts to persuade his editors that these magazines should be devoted to classical music were, sadly, unsuccessful. In 2010, he became editor-in-chief of Limelight magazine, Australia’s national classical music monthly, which won Australian Publisher’s Excellence Awards for Best Relaunch and Magazine of the Year under his stewardship.

As if this wasn’t exhausting enough, he began a parallel career as a psychologist, and was awarded the University Medal in Psychology from the University of Sydney and the Australian Psychology Prize in 2015. He has since worked as a psychologist in clinics and hospitals, while holding a teaching fellowship at the University of Sydney. He is currently the director of the Paris Psychology Centre in France, and gives talks about classical music for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and others.

He is passionate about the intersection between classical music and mental health. He believes that the musical traditions of listening, practise and connection to the sublime can be a powerful protective factor against mental illness. And thinks that a life without Mozart is inherently a bit depressing.

Hugh is a music journalist, arts administrator and recordings consultant. Previously deputy editor of Limelight, label manager at ABC Classic and ABC Jazz, Marketing Manager for the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, and manager of Sydney’s iconic classical record store Fish Fine Music, Hugh is currently Editorial Manager at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a freelance consultant for a number of different artists.

Phillip Sametz has spent his working life advocating for music and musicians – in print, online, as a radio broadcaster, on stage and as tour leader.

In 2023 he will lead six tours for Renaissance Tours, taking groups to – among other cultural events – the Adelaide Festival, the first Ring cycle to be staged in regional Australia (in Bendigo), the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville and a week of opera and orchestral music in New York.

His annotations and articles appear regularly in the program books and web pages of the Queensland and Adelaide Symphony orchestras, and the Melbourne Recital Centre. His history of the Sydney Symphony, Play On!, was published by ABC Books.

Since 2019, he has helped mentor aspiring music professionals as tutor for the Words About Music course at the Australian Youth Orchestra’s annual National Music Camp.

A graduate in linguistics and music from the University of Sydney, Natalie well known in the Sydney concert-going community as a writer of program notes for ensembles such as the Sydney Symphony, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sydney Chamber Choir and Musica Viva Australia, and a regular performer in choral ensembles Cantillation, Pinchgut Opera and Sydney Chamber Choir. She is the Publications Editor for the classical music record label ABC Classics, a volunteer presenter with community radio station 2RPH, and a keen gardener and bellringer.

Megan Steller is an artist manager, writer, and producer based in London. Having completed a Bachelor of Music at the University of Melbourne as a pianist and repetiteur, Megan is now passionate about working with emerging artists and seasoned performers alike to help create fulfilling, diverse, and creatively empowering careers in the classical music sector. As an artist manager, she has worked for Intermusica (UK) and Patrick Togher Artists’ Management (AUS). As a journalist, Megan has been published in Limelight Magazine, The Age, and The Music, and has created program notes and pre-concert talks for the Barbican, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Musica Viva, Melbourne Youth Orchestras, and Orchestra Victoria. She is currently an Associate Artist Manager at Rayfield Allied.

Zoltán Szabó is a cellist and musicologist. Having migrated from his native Hungary to Australia in 1985, he worked with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Sydney until 1991, when he became Principal Cello with Opera Australia, a job he kept for twenty years. In 2000, a Churchill Fellowship enabled him to study baroque cello and performance practice in Europe. In 2017, he was awarded with a Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD); his thesis is on the source and edition history of the Solo Cello Suites by J. S. Bach. He has also published several articles on this subject.

Currently, Zoltán is teaching music history, musicology and chamber music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His concert and opera reviews and other writings have been regularly published by Bachtrack (London), The Conversation and The Australian Book Review. He is also regularly asked to provide pre-concert talks for Musica Viva and for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Educator Kim Waldock taught classroom music in Independent Schools for over 20 years.

In 2009 she joined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, directing their Learning and Engagement arm, expanding the schools’ and community work; and creating online resources and touring education programmes. In 2015 The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden employed her as General Manager to spearhead the development and delivery of their new national programmes across the UK. She now uses her unique expertise in education, curriculum development and the Performing Arts as a consultant, teaching and developing strategic programmes in the U.K., Europe and Australia. Kim a foundation member of the Chartered College of Teachers UK, A Quality Assessor for the Arts Council England, and a Trustee of the Academy of Ancient Music and Orpheus Sinfonia.

Gordon is a writer, speaker, editor, and dramatist with a recent interest in what he calls ‘cine-opera’.

For the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, he wrote the libretto adaptation of Strehlow’s book Journey to Horseshoe Bend for composer Andrew Schultz. He also wrote new dialogue for Sydney Symphony's revival of the first opera written in Australia, 1847’s Don John of Austria, restaged at Angel Place Recital Hall, 2007. He gave many pre-concert talks for this Orchestra before moving to the US. In Los Angeles, he completed a Certificate in Screenwriting from UCLA Extension. He has been a reviewer for the international online magazine OperaWire both here and in LA, and gives his courses through Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes attached to western US university campuses.

Gordon’s longstanding association with Australia’s orchestras includes periods as a concert programmer (including producer of the first work written for orchestra by Indigenous Australians, Music is our Culture) and editor of program booklets (1999-2005).

He has lived in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Darwin (actor/writer for Darwin Theatre Group). Born in Melbourne, he currently lives in Sydney.