1:1 Concert Musicians
Sally Walker, Curator
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Rachael Thoms
Rachael Thoms is a Canberra-based vocalist, composer, and researcher whose work moves fluidly across jazz, contemporary, and classical practice. Her performance is shaped by expressive versatility, improvisation, and deep collaboration, with a strong focus on live, responsive music-making across genres and disciplines.
She appears regularly as a soloist at many major Australian cultural institutions, with broadcast credits on ABC Television and ABC Classic. Performance highlights include appearances with George Benson, Vince Jones, Steve Barry, Lior, The Song Company, Lisa Moore, Erin Helyard, and the late Rob Guest.
Her recording work spans original and improvisation-led projects, including The Great Unknown with Luke Sweeting, Nothing But Blue Skies with Lachlan Coventry, and a recent appearance on Andrea Keller’s Flicker & Polar Bird.
Alongside her performance practice, Rachael is a passionate educator with over fifteen years’ experience in higher music education. She holds a PhD in vocal pedagogy and improvisation, and her teaching and research inform a deeply embodied, responsive approach to performance and collaboration.
Harold Gretton
Classical guitarist Harold Gretton brings a diverse mix of masterpieces to life with an interpretive approach founded as much on raw passion as on thorough research. During studies at the Canberra School of Music and postgraduate studies in Canberra and Strasbourg, he won first prizes in 7 International guitar competitions, and major prizes in many others. He has recorded five albums, and has appeared as a soloist in Concerto performances in Australia, Portugal and Greece.
For his PhD, Harold’s research interest is historically-informed interpretation. This interest led him to perform numerous concerts on original early guitars in Sydney and Canberra as well as at the International Condrongianos Festival. Instruments have included those by Guadagnini, Lacotte, Panormo and Soriot (from the collection of Carlo Barone). Harold has been invited to present lectures at the ANU on the topics of musical form, Haydn and the London fortepiano school, Composing for the Guitar, and essay-writing. He has also presented papers at the ANU Post-Graduate Symposium, and was employed by the ANU as a tutor in music history for undergraduate music students.
Harold is a passionate educator for students of all levels. He has given masterclasses at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Queensland, at numerous guitar festivals, and at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. He is currently employed at the Riverina Conservatorium of Music and has also held posts at the Stuttgarter Musikschule, the Clara Schumann Musikschule, the Rheinperle Mandolinenverein as conductor and artistic director of a mandolin orchestra, and worked for six years at Music Colombo, a private music school in Saint-Louis (France).
Larissa Kovalchuk
Larissa Kovalchuk is a soprano and bandura player whose performances combine classical vocal artistry with the rich traditions of Ukrainian music. Accompanying herself on the bandura, Ukraine’s national string instrument, she creates an intimate and atmospheric sound world where voice and resonant strings intertwine. Her repertoire features works from classical, baroque, and world music traditions arranged for bandura and voice, alongside traditional Ukrainian songs and lyrical folk ballads, offering audiences a deeply evocative and meditative listening experience.
