TANIA KERNAGHAN

Tania Maree Kernaghan (born 18 July 1968 in Albury, New South Wales) is a country music singer. She is the sister of Lee Kernaghan and daughter of Ray Kernaghan. During her career, Tania has amassed sixteen #1 radio hits singles, numerous awards, sell out concerts and record sales in the hundreds of thousands. In 1992, Kernaghan released her first single, "I'll Be Gone". Her first album, 'December Moon', was released in January 1996. It was nominated for Best Country Album at the ARIA Music Awards of 1996. The album was certified Gold by ARIA in 1997 and Platinum in 1998. Proudly boasting seven chart topping career albums with number eight set for release in 2020, adding to her credits. She has also performed at the renowned Grand Old Opry in Nashville

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CARMEL KAINE

Carmel Kaine (22 March 1937 – 21 April 2013) was a classical violinist. She was born in Wagga Wagga, and studied at the New South Wales Conservatorium, graduating at age 17 with the prize for the most outstanding student. Two years later, she spent a year as a member of the South Australian Symphony Orchestra. She then continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she won the three violin prizes and the Violin Scholarship in her first year. Kaine furthered her studies at the Juilliard School in New York with Ivan Galamian. At the Juilliard School, Kaine was awarded a Violin Fellowship and in 1967 was awarded the first prize at the Vienna International Violin Competition. Recitals for the BBC followed both as a soloist and in chamber ensembles. She was a member of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields for ten years, making solo recordings with the Academy and performing at major festivals throughout Europe. 

Her recording of Vivaldi’s La stravaganza, Sir Neville Marriner conducting, won a Grand Prix du Disque and a Rosette Award in The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music (Decca Records425721). Kaine was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music for twelve years and in 1983 was made a Fellow. She was invited by Yehudi Menuhin to read at his school in Cobham, Surrey. In 1990 Kaine took up the Senior Lecturer position at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University and for five years was Head of Department. In 1991, with her husband John Willison, she founded the Limpinwood Ensemble and many performances have been given for the ABC and at Tyalgum Classical Music Festival, which they also founded. She also founded the Queensland Conservatorium Soloists, which has raised over $30,000 for the Conservatorium’s String Department.

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TERESA BECK-SWINDALE

Teresa Beck-Swindale is a Tasmanian composer, producer, and musician. She has contributed enormously to the life and soul of Tasmanian Regional Arts. Her album 'Against All Odds' is a record crafted of mellow rock, lounge jazz, and alt-country ballads. She was also a member of Tasmanian band Kyron Howell and Liquid Nails.

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INGRID SPIELMAN

Ingrid Spielman was the pianist for Tactics who were one of the most celebrated acts on Australia's new wave scene during the 1970s and '80s, boasting an eclectic sound that ranged from angular pop and stripped-down psychedelia to fractured art rock.

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DEBORAH GRAY

Deborah Gray (born 1958) is a former Australian high fashion model and actress who is now best known as an internationally best selling author of non-fiction spell books and jazz singer. Gray was born in Canberra where as a teenager she won the Teen Model of the Year competition, after which she was picked up for a modelling contract with Viviens Management. She appeared on catwalks, leading fashion magazine covers and starred in TV commercials.

In 1977 at the age of 19, she branched out into acting and burst onto TV screens and into Australian TV history with her role on the television soap opera Number 96. After Number 96 she continued her acting career as a popular television and film actress, and was considered a leading sex symbol at the time. She played a continuing dramatic role in soap opera The Young Doctors, acted in a guest role in the police drama series Bellamy (1981), and was a regular co-host in an Australian Candid Camera style television series titled Catch Us If You Can. 

Gray started an all-girl cabaret act named Deborah Gray and the Flames (one of the flames was future Perfect Match hostess Debbie Newsome). Other musical forays at the time were the song ''Mellow Loving'', a top ten dance hit, ''Love Song of O'', and the European top 40 hit ''No Time to Lose'' which was released by the German Hansa Label/Coconut Records. By 1986 Gray, tired of the 'sex-symbol' actress tag and, alarmed at the local film industry's growing penchant for violent films, left acting altogether to pursue writing and music full-time. She moved to New York in 1986 to study jazz vocalization and songwriting. She lived there for 9 years, performing in many of the known cabaret and jazz clubs (Maxims, Blue Note, Bradleys, The Supper Club, Tatous) and recording her first all original jazz CD 'Still Got A Thing' featuring trumpeter Roy Hargrove. 

As of 2007 Gray is based in Australia where she continues her jazz performing and recording and is an author, songwriter and producer. Her 'magickal' themed non-fiction books have been translated into 10 languages. Gray appeared in the FFC funded documentary hosted by American Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino titled Not Quite Hollywood, a film homage to the breakthrough days of Australian films of the 70’s and early 80’s.In 2018, there was renewed international interest from UK and European DJ’s in one of the album tracks ''Bikini'' and ARVO’s music was re-released internationally on vinyl along with a DJ remix and streaming through Strangelove Records.

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LISA MOORE

Born in Canberra in 1960, Lisa Moore is an internationally renowned pianist with a diverse and eclectic mix of musical influences. Her early life included overseas travel, and by the age of 13, she had visited more than a dozen countries and lived in Sydney and London. However Moore's development of an artist can be traced to her formative years in Canberra during the 1970s. A succession of “strange and interesting people” through her childhood included the Australian painter Charles Blackman. Sydney musical teacher Albert Landa, urged Moore to take her considerable talent seriously, which in part led to her decision to transfer from Telopea Park High School, a government run school, to 'Chiron College', then a newly opened alternative school located in Birchgrove in Sydney.

Later at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Moore, found support for her fledging musical career. In 1979, at the age of 20. Moore moved to the United States for two years and pursued further studies in Paris thereafter. She settled permanently in New York City in 1985. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stonybrook. Lisa Moore now teaches at the Yale-Norfolk New Music Workshop Summer Festival and at Wesleyan University.

She has been crowned "New York's queen of avant-garde piano" and a "visionary" by The New Yorker magazine; the New York Times claims "her energy is illuminating" and The American Record Guide writes "her concerts are legendary". Moore often incorporates theatrical elements in works such as ipiano:my brilliant career, Janacek from the street, Musically Speaking, Totally Wired Piano, and Wilde's World. She was the founding pianist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, a New York-based electro-acoustic sextet, touring with them for 16 years. In May 2008 Moore curated Australia's Canberra International Music Festival Sounds Alive series.

Moore's solo discs have been published on Cantaloupe Music, Philip Glass's Orange Mountain Music, Irreverence Group Music, Bandcamp, Tall Poppies Records) with music ranging from Leoš Janáček to Philip Glass. Her 2016 disc 'The Stone People' (Cantaloupe) – featuring the music of John Luther Adams, Martin Bresnick, Missy Mazzoli, Kate Moore, Frederic Rzewski, and Julia Wolfe – made both The New York Times Top Classical Albums 2016 and the 2017 Naxos Critics' Choice listings. Moore has recorded over thirty collaborative discs (Sony Classical Records, Nonesuch Records, Deutsche Grammophon, BMG, New World Records, ABC Classics, Albany Records, New Albion, Starkland, Harmonia Mundi). Her Steve Reich Music for Eighteen Musicians (Harmonia Mundi) with Ensemble Signal was listed on The New York Times Top Classical Albums 2015. Moore is a Steinway artist.

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