Nicole Mealey is a Mezzo-soprano and a graduate of The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). Upon graduation Nicole was awarded the 2019 John and Margaret Winstanley Award for Most Outstanding Classical Graduate from WAAPA.

Nicole’s previous engagements and awards include the role of Madame de la Haltière in Massenet’s Cendrillon at WAAPA, a place as a semi-finalist at the 2018 IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition, The Patricia Price Award with Scholarship for Melbourne International Festival of Lieder and Art Song (MIFLAS), The 2019 Doris Smith Trophy at Wollongong Eisteddfod, Pacific Opera’s Prue Kennard Scholarship 2020, and the role of Cherubino in Pacific Opera’s 2020 and 2021 productions of The Marriage of Figaro. Nicole is currently in her second year as a featured Young Artist with Pacific Opera.

Benjamin Burton is a talented young pianist with a passion for accompanying vocal and instrumental performances. In his role as accompanist, Ben has performed all over the country, and has worked for Opera Australia, Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Australian Institute of Music, while also working as a freelance accompanist. Highlights over the last couple of years have included recording with the ABC (appearing on the CD Ballads of a Pleasant Life with Peter Coleman-Wright and the Nexas Quartet), performing with Moorambilla Voices for the Royal Visit to Dubbo, and giving recitals with Daniela Leska at Sydney Town Hall and the Polish Embassy. Ben was awarded 1st Prize in the 2017 Sydney Song Prize, and 2nd Best Pianist in the 2016 MIETTA National Art Song Competition. During 2020 Ben became a creator of backing tracks and is greatly enjoying the return to live music performances happening in 2021.

Dr Danaë Killian is a Melbourne-based pianist whose poetry-infused expressionist performances are known for their intense originality and interpretive power. Her repertoire ranges across the complete solo piano music of the Second Viennese School, major polyphonic works by JS Bach, and a wealth of Australian compositions. A passionate champion of modern art music, Danaë Killian has delivered over a hundred world premieres, performing throughout Europe, China and the USA, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. She has been the recipient of prestigious awards for her musical and academic prowess, including the Australian Alumni (W G Walker) Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship, the Helen Macpherson Smith Scholarship, an Australian Postgraduate Award, and an Australia Award Endeavour Research Fellowship.

Dr Killian is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne, where she earned her PhD in 2010 with a dissertation on Virginia Woolf’s The Waves as a modernist imagining of the harmony of the spheres. Her research project Transformations and Initiations: Sylvia Plath in Flames, in Performance resulted in three major performances produced between 2012 and 2015: Sylvia Plath in the Domestic Sublime, The Dove’s Annihilation, and The Flame and the Rose Folded Together, all of which explored the relationship between poetry and music, biography and art, potential and actual selves. This theme was continued in Killian’s expressionist performance-creation My Heart (2017), a work of soul-homelessness and starry yearning, which sought the lost Berlin of 1911 within the creative hearts of Killian’s composer friends in Melbourne; Killian is recording My Heart in 2021 with Move Records. Among Danaë Killian’s previous recordings are Arnold Schoenberg: Complete Works for Piano Solo (Move, 2015) and Ernest Bloch: Viola and Piano (Move, 2018, with Barbara Hornung).

Danaë Killian is a Forest Collective core artist. Forest Collective is a new music ensemble based in Melbourne under the artistic direction of Evan J Lawson.

Australian pianist Samuel Dharma is the winner of numerous piano competition awards in Australia, Canada and Germany. His playing has been described as “powerful” (Jungfrau Zeitung) with "an artistic sincerity and intensity which is compelling as well as rare" (Dr Robert Roux, Steinway Artist).

Samuel has given solo recitals and performed as chamber musician to audiences in Australia, Europe, and North America. His performances have been broadcasted by 2MBS FM. As concerto soloist, he has performed with the UNSW Orchestra conducted by Steven Hillinger and Colin Piper. He is also the resident pianist at the Kawai Sydney International Masterclass Festival since 2015, performing works by Prof. Graham Hair and his composition students.

A graduate of the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory (Toronto, Canada) and Rice University (Houston, USA), Samuel has studied with many of the world’s foremost artist-teachers including Leon Fleisher, Robert McDonald, John Perry and Jacques Rouvier. He maintains a private studio in the Hills District and also serves as a member of the piano faculty at the Conservatorium High School.

English born New Zealander, Rebecca Currier, has been a full-time singer for 2 decades. She completed her Masters degree in performance singing at Victoria University (New Zealand) where she also gained degrees in Music Composition and English Literature. She was awarded a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Music in London where she was awarded the German Language prize in 2000.

Rebecca joined Opera North (based in Leeds UK) as a full-time chorister in 2005 and performed in over 28 productions, whilst also understudying and performing roles such as Carmen (Carmen), 2nd Lady (Magic Flute), Mariette and Lolette (La Rondine), and Madchen (The Arms and the Cow). Whilst in Europe she also appeared at the Bregenz Festival, and appeared on the Oratorio and Concert platforms throughout the UK, Ireland and France.

In late 2011 Rebecca settled with her family in Sydney and joined Opera Australia as a full-time chorister for 6 years. and she currently juggles her performing with a busy teaching portfolio.

Pianist Michael Curtain is currently a repetiteur at Opera Australia and is the musical director for their touring schools program. He has performed in concert with many of Australia’s leading singers, including Amelia Farrugia, Samuel Dundas, Natalie Aroyan, Anna Dowsley, Jonathan Abernethy, and Jane Edwards.

Michael is also a repetiteur for the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sydney Children’s Choir, Sydney University Graduate Choirs, and previously the Tasmanian Chorale and St Mary’s Cathedral (Hobart) as assistant organist. His work with ensembles includes the Sydney Symphony Fellowship, Sinfonia and Sinfonietta, the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and currently the Strelitzia Ensemble.

Michael has been an official accompanist for the McDonald’s Sydney Eisteddfod and the Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Foundation. Michael has also worked in Music Theatre, having previously been musical director for Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, among many others. Michael studied piano performance and accompaniment with David Miller AM, Clem Leske, and Natalia Ricci at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.