Three Marys

Andrée Greenwell is a multi-award-winning composer with a catalogue of over 100 scores for concert, opera, music theatre, drama, dance, film and installation. She has created music for Australia’s leading performing arts organisations including Sydney Theatre Company, Symphony Australia, Australian Dance Theatre, The Sydney Front, Belvoir, Bell Shakespeare, Malthouse and Queensland Music Festival.

Growing up in Melbourne’s post-punk era while studying classical flute and composition at the VCA, her music blends classical music traditions, the cinematic score, and popular music subcultures. Her impressive output includes the groundbreaking chamber Sweet Death, commissioned by Chamber Made Opera for Melbourne International Festival of the Arts in 1991. She recently composed and sound designed John Janson-Moore’s film installation Contact Trace, narrated by Uncle Jack Charles, awarded Best Experimental Film, Solaris Film Festival, Nice.

As artistic director of Green Room Music, Andrée is a leading creator of independent music theatre in Australia, frequently collaborating with contemporary writers. Her long form works Dreaming Transportation, The Villainelles, Laquiem, Gothic and The Hanging of Jean Lee variously received presentations at Sydney Festival, Riverside Parramatta, the Seymour Centre, Melbourne Arts Centre, Arts House and Sydney Opera House. The Hanging of Jean Lee and Dreaming Transportation were studio-recorded at the ABC studios, Ultimo, for various feature broadcasts.

Andrée holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong.

www.andreegreenwell.com

Originally from Perth, Christine Evans now lives and works on Piscataway and Nacotchtank land in Washington, DC. Her writing spans dramatic genres (plays, opera) and fiction. Her plays are published by Samuel French (Trojan Barbie) and have been developed and produced at venues including Belvoir Street Theater, HERE Arts (NYC), the American Repertory Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Galilee was a finalist for the Lysicrates Award (2018) and premieres at Philadelphia’s Azuka Theater in 2023.

Christine’s new novel, Nadia, is forthcoming in the US in 2023 from the University of Iowa Press; her novel-in-verse, Cloudless, was published by UWAP (2015). Recent honors include a 2020 Howard Foundation Award, three MacDowell Fellowships and five DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowships. Christine holds an MFA and PhD from Brown University and currently serves as Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University.

www.christineevanswriter.com

Anna Tregloan is an artist and designer working with sculptural and live elements, text, image and audience in public spaces, galleries and theatres. She creates innovative and human friendly environments to explore complex ideas in a practice focused on audience driven experience and utilising found objects and actions.  She aims to inspire curiosity and empathy and to enable audience to moderate their own experience and eschew top down directorial approaches.

She collaborates extensively with cultural institutions and independent artists in the fields of visual art, contemporary theatre, dance, opera and contemporary museum practice.  She has presented work throughout urban and regional Australia and internationally and honoured to have been nominated and awarded state, national and international awards for design and creation including an Australia Council Fellowship (Theatre, 2012). Previously she was Artistic Resident at Malthouse Theatre, is an AsiaLink alumni and is currently a Creative Resident at Powerhouse MAAS. 

Damien is a lighting designer working in theatre, opera and dance. He has designed over 300 shows. Damien’s career highlights include Neil Armfield’s production of THE RING CYCLE for Opera Australia, EXIT THE KING on Broadway starring Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon, Graeme Murphy’s SWAN LAKE for the Australian Ballet which was presented in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, KEATING! THE MUSICAL, Australia’s most successful subsidised theatre show ever, and Australian Dance Theatre’s BIRDBRAIN which played over 60 venues around the world.

Damien has won three Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Lighting Design and four Green Room awards for Best Lighting Design. He won the Australian Production Designers Guild inaugural Award for Lighting Design for his work on Opera Australia’s DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, and the Showreelfinder Award for Live Performance Lighting Design for THE GLASS MENAGERIE at Belvoir. 

Soprano Samantha Hargreaves holds a Master of Music (Opera Performance) from The University of Melbourne. During her studies she sang the title role in The Coronation of Poppea, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Nella in Gianni Schicchi and Beth in Little Women (Adamo). With the Lisa Gasteen National Opera Program in 2022, she performed the principal roles of Hannchen in Die Opernprobe (Lorzing) and Reserl in Der häusliche Krieg (Schubert).

In 2022, she won the John Fulford Prize in the Herald Sun Aria competition and an Acclaim Ambassadorial Scholarship (The Acclaim Awards). In 2021, she received the Bettine McCaughan Memorial Scholarship (ANATS) and the Melbourne Male Welsh Choir named her ‘Singer of the Year.’

Samantha is an artist with Melba Opera Trust for a second year. In September, she will begin a two-year Artist Masters (Opera Studies) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on full scholarship.

Port Moresby-born operatic soprano Heru Pinkasova was raised in Cairns, then studied in Brisbane and the Czech Rep. A uniquely versatile talent, in 2022, she premiered her autobiographical work Bilum Mamma comprising of traditional PNG music sung in Roro and Motua language through to the classical operatic canon.

In recent years Heru sang in Karna language for The Beginning of Nature with Australian Dance Theatre, joining them for their European & Australian tours. For Adelaide Fringe Festival & Judith Wright Centre, Heru performed with Hot Brown Honey Cabaret. In 2014 Heru played Queenie in Show Boat for The Production Company, Melbourne. She has worked with Opera Queensland for many years in mainstage productions, school residencies, new work developments and is a Young Artist alumni. In 2021 she collaborated with award-winning Queensland beatboxer Dr Rhythm creating Songs My Aunties Taught Me in a convention-busting blend of opera and contemporary beats.

Elizabeth Scott is a Lecturer in Choral Conducting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney and the Associate Music Director of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. She is a graduate of Symphony Australia’s Conductor Development Program, was awarded the Sydney Choral Symposium Foundation Choral Conducting Scholarship in 2008 and completed her Doctorate in Choral Conducting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2021. 

Elizabeth has been the Musical Director of Vox, Sydney Philharmonia’s youth choir since 2008 and has built this ensemble into one of Australia’s leading youth choirs. She regularly works as a chorus master for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and has prepared choirs for conductors including David Robertson, Simone Young and Charles Dutoit. Elizabeth is in demand as a studio session conductor and has performed and recorded with Pinchgut Opera and The Song Company.