Professor Anna Goldsworthy is Director of the Elder Conservatorium of Music, and an award-winning pianist, writer, and festival director.
As a pianist, Anna performs extensively throughout Australia and internationally. She is a founding member of Seraphim Trio, whose most recent recordings are the ARIA-award-winning Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds for Decca, with Paul Kelly, James Ledger, and Alice Keath, and the CD set Trio Through Time for ABC Classics, tracing the development of the piano trio from Mozart and Haydn until today.
As a writer, Anna was awarded Newcomer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards for her debut memoir, Piano Lessons, detailing her formative lessons with pedagogue Eleonora Sivan, released in Australia, North America, Germany, Korea and Vietnam, and shortly to appear in China. Her most recent book, the novel Melting Moments, was released in 2020 to wide acclaim and longlisted for the Colin Roderick Award. She is the author of the libretto of the opera A Christmas Carol, by composer Graeme Koehne, which will be premiered by Victorian Opera in December 2022.
In 2022, Anna presents her music theatre work After Kreutzer at the Adelaide Festival; performs extensively around Australia and New Zealand, with Seraphim Trio, violinists Andrew Haveron and Kristian Winther, violist Christopher Moore, pianist Konstantin Shamray, and soprano Lorina Gore; and appears as concerto soloist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She directs the Coriole Music Festival, and the Hayllar Music and Mountains Festival in Queenstown, New Zealand. In 2022, Anna is also co-curator of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s ‘She Speaks’ festival with Anne Cawrse, and the PianoLab festival with Anne Wiberg.
Described as an exhilarating performer with faultless technique and fearless command of the piano, Australian based Russian pianist Konstantin Shamray enjoys performing on an international level with the world’s leading orchestras and concert presenters.
Konstantin was born in Novosibirsk and commenced his studies at the age of six with Natalia Knobloch. He then studied in Moscow at the Russian Gnessin Academy of Music with Professors Tatiana Zelikman and Vladimir Tropp, and the Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany with Professor Tibor Szasz.
In 2008, Konstantin burst onto the concert scene when he won First Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition. He is the first and only competitor to date in the 40 years of the competition to win both First and People’s Choice Prizes, in addition to six other prizes. He then went on to win First Prize at the 2011 Klavier Olympiade in Bad Kissingen, Germany and has performed at the Kissinger Sommer festival. In July 2013, following chamber recitals with Alban Gerhardt and Feng Ning, he was awarded the festival’s coveted Luitpold Prize for “outstanding musical achievements”.
Since then, Konstantin performs extensively throughout the world. In Australia, highlights include engagements with the Adelaide Symphony, West Australia, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony orchestras. Outside of Australia he has performed with the Russian National Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, Orchestre National de Lyon, Prague Philharmonia, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic among others. He has enjoyed collaborating with distinguished conductors such as Vladimir Spivakov, Dmitry Liss, Tugan Sokhiev, Nicholas Milton and Alexandr Vedernikov.
Chamber music plays a strong role in Konstantin’s musical career and collaborations have included tours with the Australian String Quartet, the Australia Piano Quartet, Kristof Barati, Andreas Brantelid, Li Wei Qin and Leonard Elschenbroich. Konstantin has performed as part of the International Piano Series in Adelaide, and at the Melbourne Recital Centre and Ukaria Cultural Centre. He has enjoyed critical acclaim at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Bochum Festival in Germany, the Mariinsky International Piano Festival and the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Adelaide festival, Musica Viva Sydney and Huntington festivals. Recent engagements include the FOFO Festival with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, solo recitals with both the Harris and Medici International Piano Series, concertos with Queensland and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, and a residency with Southern Cross Soloists. Konstantin has recorded albums with the labels Naxos, ABC Classics and Fonoforum.
Konstantin is Lecturer in Piano at the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, and was awarded his PhD in 2020 for his performance-based project ‘The piano as Kolokola, Glocken and Cloches: performing and extending the European traditions of bell-inspired piano music’.
