Claire Edwardes
Percussionist
Friday 29 November 2024 7:30pm
Claire Edwardes OAM is a percussionist, artistic director, chamber musician, soloist and change maker in the classical music scene in Australia. Edwardes is the co-founder and artistic director of Australia’s leading new music group Ensemble Offspring and the only Australian to win the ‘APRA Art Music Award for Excellence by an Individual’ four times. Claire is the recipient of the 2023 Australian Women in Music Awards Creative Leadership Award.
Her solo career was launched when she won the 1999 ABC Young Performers Award. In 2019, Edwardes performed James McMillan’s 2nd Percussion Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In 2023 she premiered Anne Cawrse’s new marimba concerto ‘Dare to Declare’ with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to great acclaim. Edwardes has appeared on ABC television as an occasional host of Play School and as a panellist on Spicks and Specks. In 2021, Edwardes created Rhythms of Change and Australian Marimba Composition Kit, commissioning and educational projects that advocate strongly for gender equity in classical music. Claire is currently on staff as a percussion teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and is the mother of two teenage girls in Sydney’s Inner West.
Recently described in The Age as a “prodigiously talented Australian…Edwardes is an invigorating musical life force”, Claire is a national treasure in the Australian art music scene.
Program: The Australian Marimba
- Ross Edwards – Marimba Dances
- Maria Grenfell – Stings and Wings
- Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose – Dalrymple
- Elena Kats-Chernin – Violet’s Etude
- Martin Wesley Smith – For Marimba and Tape
- Anne Cawrse – Dance Vignettes
- Matthew Hindson – Flash
Concert information
Concert commences 7:30pm
Location
St John Paul College Theatre
Hogbin Drive, Coffs Harbour