Laments and Lullabies – 26 July 2025

Description

Heather Lloyd is a versatile and highly sought-after violist, performing on both baroque and modern violas. Following a decade of study at the Sydney Conservatorium, Elder Conservatorium and Australian National Academy of Music, Heather gained her first tutti contract in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in 2006. During this time she founded a string quartet and a string chamber orchestra: Adelaide Chamber Players. Heather remained the orchestra’s artistic director for multiple festival performances with guest international soloists such as German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt and celebrated Australian violinist Sophie Rowell.

Heather currently performs regularly with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia, Orchestra Victoria, and Sydney Lyric Orchestra. Variety is the spice of life is her motto!

An accomplished early music specialist, and contemporary chamber music enthusiast, Heather has performed extensively with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Ironwood ensemble, Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera and Bach Akademie Australia as well as Sydney Chamber Opera and Halcyon Ensemble. Heather can be heard playing viola on albums with singer-songwriters Jack Carty, Katie Noonan and the late Dr. Gurrumul Yunupingu.

Michael Burden is a Sydney-based countertenor who enjoys a varied career of operatic and concert and choral repertoire. Recent career highlights include performing as Nireno in Julius Caesar with Pinchgut Opera, and Rosencrantz (cover) in Hamlet with Opera Australia. A seasoned concert performer, Michael’s solo concert credits include Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus with Adelaide Baroque; Gloria with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and the Vivaldi Vespers (Stabat Mater, Magnificat & Beatus Vir) with Brisbane Chamber Choir . Handel’s Dixit Dominus with Royal Melbourne Philharmonic, Messiah, Nisi Dominus, Didymus (Theodora) and Joad in (Athalia.) Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Royal Melbourne Philharmonic and Magnificat; Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit, J.S. Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion with Fiori Musicali Armidale; and numerous Bach cantatas.
He has worked throughout Australia with ensembles including Pinchgut Opera, Opera Australia, Bach Akademie, Adelaide Baroque, and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra; and with conductors including Tim Anderson, Tahu Matheson, Erin Helyard, Madeleine Easton, and Paul Dyer AO.

James Larsen is a cellist, teacher, conductor, and composer. He is Head of Strings at MLC School in Sydney, responsible for designing and teaching string-centric music education across curricular and co-curricular spaces from kindergarten to year 12. He is frequently featured as a concerto soloist with orchestras around the country, playing both the standard repertoire and concerti written for him, having giving the Australian or world premieres of repertoire by Peter Sculthorpe, Arvo Pärt, and Einojuhani Rautavaara, as well as over 30 world premieres by living Australian composers in recent years.

Since completing his formal studies, James has made appearances as a chamber musician and soloist at festivals throughout Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and the U.S.A and is a regular feature in the musical life of Sydney as the cellist of the Nomad String Quartet. As a founding member of the Geist String Quartet, he was awarded the Llewelyn Travel Scholarship, Westheimer Fellowship, and Mary Valentine prize whilst studying Eberhard Feltz, the Kuss Quartet, and the Elias Quartet in Europe and America. He has also been awarded the Ruth Pfanner Cello Scholarship and Margot Lewin Prize.

James is privileged to perform on cellos by Luiz Amorim and Rainer Beilharz, as well as bows by Michael Maurushat and Josephine Thomachot.

Hannah Lane is a leading Australian exponent of the Baroque harp. She studied in Milan, Italy with renowned historical harpist Mara Galassi. As a soloist and continuo player, Hannah performs with ensembles throughout Australia and Europe, and has appeared at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, Urbino Musica Antica and Adelaide Festival.
She is a recording artist for ABC Classics, Obsidian Records, Brilliant Classics and Pinchgut Live, and the artistic director of Ensemble 642, dedicated to music for early plucked strings. Hannah is a regular guest lecturer in historical harp at the University of Melbourne and her research has been published in Early Music and Eighteenth-Century Music.
Italian Baroque triple harp by Claus Hüttel, Düren, Germany, 2014, after the painting La familia del artista Brera by Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, c.1650 (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).