Composer development and creative collaboration are central to Flinders Quartet’s ethos and next year’s season showcases some thrilling new work! Featured is the first string quartet by Deborah Cheetham AO – Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer, mentor and educator.
Flinders Quartet – instantly recognised as one of Australia’s best-loved chamber music ensembles – celebrates its 20th birthday in 2020 with an outstanding series of concerts.
And it will share the cake and candles with Beethoven too – commemorating his 250th year in some style!
Among the treats awaiting fans both new and long-standing – at three beautiful Melbourne venues as well as in Sydney and Canberra – are Schubert, Webern, Mozart & Puccini favourites as well as new commissions by Australian composers Deborah Cheetham and Derek Brookes. Plus a celebratory serve of Beethoven in each concert!
Flinders’ March, June and October programs will each come to the Melbourne Recital Centre, Montsalvat Barn Gallery in Eltham and the Collins Street Baptist Church – with featured guest artist Lloyd Van’t Hoff joining them to play Mozart’s divine Clarinet Quintet K581 in the climactic October concerts. February 28 brings the Quartet to Chatswood’s Concourse for the Sydney Mozart Society (with Lloyd Van’t Hoff featured) and May sees the Quartet feature in the Canberra Festival, premiering new work by Katy Abbott. In August it plans to return to Sydney and the spectacular Independent Theatre with the Sydney debut of its Composer Development Program.
New Addition
2020 sees a brilliant new addition to the awesome foursome that now comprises Wilma Smith (violin) joining Thibaud Pavlovic-Hobba (violin) and founding members Zoe Knighton (cello) and Helen Ireland (viola).
Hailing from New Zealand, former MSO concertmaster Wilma studied at the New England Conservatory under legendary Dorothy DeLay and Louis Krasner, eventually playing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and leading the Harvard Chamber Orchestra. She has led the SSO, WASO, TSO and Auckland Philharmonic as guest concertmaster and played with the Australian World Orchestra. She curates her own chamber series Wilma & Friends, based at Scotch College.
Some Thrilling New Work
Composer development and creative collaboration is central to Flinders Quartet’s ethos and next year’s season showcases some thrilling new work! Featured is the first string quartet by Deborah Cheetham AO – Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer, mentor and educator.
A 2015 inductee into the Honour Roll of Women in Victoria and recipient of numerous prizes and honours, Deborah is the founder of Short Black Opera and Eumeralla, her war requiem for peace sung entirely in the Gunditjmara language, premiered to sold-out audiences on-country at the Port Fairy Spring Festival and in Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in June 2019.
Flinders Quartet will also perform the first string quartet by Derek Brookes – a 2018 participant in the Quartet’s Composer Development Program.
