ARTISTS
Simon Oswell - Artistic Director 2024
Simon Oswell (viola) trained in Australia and the United States. He gained awards in the National Concerto competition and co-founded the Petra String Quartet in Tasmania. Simon has performed and recorded as a soloist and chamber musician in Australia, Europe and South East Asia and subsequently in the United States in the LA based chamber music groups, the Capitol Ensemble and Pacific Serenades. In California he occupied several Principal Viola positions including the Carmel Bach Festival, Mozart Classical Orchestra and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and recorded for the motion picture industry. Since returning to Australia Simon has appeared as Principal Viola with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Tasmanian, Queensland Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra (ARCO), Australian World Orchestra, and chamber music groups, Ensemble Liaison, Firebird Trio, Wilma and Friends, Quartz, Trio Dali, Ironwood, and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music.
A recent recording, on ABC Classics, of the Sydney based IRONWOOD ensemble, playing the Piano Quintets of Louise Farrenc and Camille Saint-Saens garnered critical acclaim. Other highlights have included performances in the UK at the Oxford May Chamber Music Festival, the North York Moors Festival, and performances with the Australian World Orchestra and Zubin Mehta and Simon Rattle, in Sydney, Melbourne, Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi.
Jaso Sasaki - violin
Doctor Jaso Sasaki is not only a leading expert on the playing technique and performance practices of the Golden Age of Violin, his PhD subject, but also a versatile performer whose experience ranges from baroque music to Broadway musicals, a restorer of gramophones, vintage cars and racing bikes, and a chef and wine expert. Already as a child he showed his multi-talent in Kuopio Temperance Society Music and Drawing Competition by winning simultaneously the first prize for music and the second prize for drawing. In more recent years he has published the album Finnish Violin Classics and actively performs in Europe and Australia.
Elinor Lea - Violin
Elinor Lea is currently a violinist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Previously she was a member of the Australian String Quartet, touring extensively within Australia and overseas. While in the ASQ she made many recordings for the ABC Classics and Naxos labels. She has been awarded an Australian Centenary Medal for Services to Australian Society and the Advancement of Music as well as an Advance Australia award for Outstanding Contribution in the Arts.
Rosanne Hunt - Cello
Rosanne Hunt loves cello more and more as she gets older. She cut her cellistic teeth in the 1970s with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, touring Europe with them when she was just 13, and progressed to leading the Australian Youth Orchestra cellos on their 1984 European tour. She has had fascinating and superbly enriching times studying with philosopher-cellist Anner Bylsma in The Netherlands, and with Irene Sharp in San Francisco, but the huge value of her early grounding with her mother, iconic cello teacher Marianne Hunt, and then with Christian Wojtowicz in Hobart is not to be underestimated.
There were detours into studying medicine and organic farming, but music always has wooed her back. She has had fabulous times over the years playing with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, the ELISION (founding member) Libra and Aphids contemporary music ensembles, the Melbourne Symphony, Orchestra Victoria (sometimes as principal cellist), and is now very involved in the Melbourne Baroque Orchestra (founding member) and Forest Collective, as well as chamber engagements with pianist Brian Chapman, flautist Kim Tan (for ABC radio’s “The March of the Women”), pianist Danae Killian (recording works of Haydn Reeder for MOVE records), and with this festival’s very own Jaso Sasaki (violin) and Simon Oswell (viola).
Rosanne is in high demand as a teacher, both at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School and at her private studio. She loves working with students to find the path that suits them best and engenders a love for the instrument.
Rosanne set up the Hunt Family Memorial Fund, which honours her mother Marianne, father Kenneth (who was a fine clarinettist alongside his career as an engineer) and cellist sister Tanya. The fund helps disadvantaged young musicians attend the Australian Youth Orchestra’s National Music Camp.
Rhodri Clarke - Piano
Rhodri Clarke graduated with first class honours from the Royal College of Music, London. He performs internationally as a piano soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician.
Rhodri’s performing experience is extensive. Last year he completed a ten-city concert tour of Europe with the opera singer Rolando Villazon and his chamber music group Bolivar Soloists during which they performed in some of the world’s most important concert venues, including Berlin’s Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, London’s Royal Festival Hall and Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris.
In 2010 Rhodri has toured twice in Latin-America, in Venezuela, with Edicson Ruiz, a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, showcasing the music of Latin American composers alongside mainstream classical composers, and in Mexico, performing Mexican folksongs in new arrangements again with the tenor Rolando Villazon. Villazon and Rhodri’s ensemble have recorded these songs on the label Deutsche Grammophon; the album, called “Mexico”, was released in September 2010 and is currently featured in classical and Latin-American music charts in several countries worldwide.
In previous years, Rhodri performed as a soloist and accompanist at Sydney Opera House and New York’s Carnegie Hall and has also given recitals at London's Wigmore Hall, Berlin's Philharmonie and the Lucerne International Music Festival. His several concerto performances include Beethoven Concerto no.3, Shostakovich Concerto No.2 and Gershwin Piano Concerto.
For the past two years, Rhodri has lived in the Netherlands where he collaborated with members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Academy and worked as a repetiteur for opera singers.
Rhodri has made several broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 including a live performance as organ continuo player on the InTune programme with another of his ensembles The Musicall Compass and as a pianist accompanying cellist Simon Wallfisch on the Between the Ears programme.
Since arriving in Australia last year, Rhodri has been in great demand as an accompanist, repetiteur, piano teacher and solo pianist. Highlights include performances with the Opera Studio Melbourne, recitals in Hobart Town Hall and Hans Vonk Music House, Tasmania, rehearsals with Melbourne Opera and his recent appointment on the music teaching staff at MLC. This year Rhodri has been invited to be the official accompanist for Victoria at the Australian Concerto and Vocal competition in Queensland and next week will take up the position of Resident Repetiteur at the Opera Studio Melbourne. He also accompanies regularly at the Melbourne Conservatorium and Melbourne University.
email : rhodriclarke@hotmail.com