Latvian Radio Choir & Genevieve Lacey

HOLLIS TAYLOR

Violinist/composer, zoömusicologist, and ornithologist Hollis Taylor is Research Fellow at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Taylor rethinks pied butcherbird repertoire for other human instruments and voices. Central to her compositional ethos is celebrating avian achievements rather than adding human improvements.

Recent commissions include works for Kronos Quartet, Ensemble Offspring and a birdsong concerto for recorder, performed by Genevieve Lacey and the Adelaide Symphony, London Sinfonia, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, supported by Creative Australia.

Generously supported by D R & K M Magarey

JON ROSE

Violinist/composer Jon Rose’s life’s work is the development of a total artform based around one instrument: The Relative Violin. Jon has appeared on over 100 albums and CDs, working with many of the innovators and mavericks in contemporary music such as Kronos String Quartet, Derek Bailey, Alvin Curran, Otomo Yoshihide, Ilan Volkov, Christian Marclay, and John Zorn.

In 2012 Jon was honoured with the Australia Council’s prestigious prize, the Don Banks Award for outstanding and sustained contribution to Australian music.

He curates the Rosenberg Museum, his own violin museum of more than 1000 artefacts.

Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose are recipients of the 2025 APRA AMCOS Art Music Award’s Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music.

ĒRIKS EŠENVALDS

Ēriks Ešenvalds is one of the most sought-after composers working today. Performances of his music are heard on every continent and his works are widely recorded. Ēriks is a popular public speaker, which he often combines with leading masterclasses and conducting. Born in Priekule, Latvia in 1977, Ēriks is a graduate of the Latvian Academy of Music where he today heads the Department of Composition.

Ēriks' music has been performed in major venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Philharmonie Berlin, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig and Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. Nordic Light, his multimedia symphony on the folklore and mythology of the northern lights, has been performed in the US, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. His full-scale opera The Immured was premiered at the Latvian National Opera and Ballet.

ALEXIS WRIGHT

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. She is the author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria, The Swan Book and, most recently, Praiseworthy. Wright’s books have won numerous literary awards, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Queensland Literary Award for Praiseworthy.

Wright is the first author to win the Stella Prize twice, and Praiseworthy is the only book to have received both the Stella and the Miles Franklin awards.

Wright is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and the winner of the 2024 Melbourne Prize for Literature.