Arcadia Winds are trailblazers for Australian wind music.
Awarded a fellowship at the Australian National Academy of Music upon their formation in late 2013, they became Musica Viva Australia’s inaugural FutureMakers musicians from 2015–17. They have brought their brand of energetic, joyful and spontaneous performance to festival stages in almost every state and territory in the country; concert halls across mainland China; and listeners around the world through broadcasts of the BBC Proms Australia chamber music series. And they have revelled in musical partnerships with internationally renowned performers including the Australian String Quartet; piano virtuosi Lambert Orkis, Paavali Jumppanen and Anna Goldsworthy; and woodwind masters Ole Kristian Dahl and Thorsten Johanns.
A desire to celebrate and promote Australian music has led Arcadia Winds to commission and perform works by composers such as Elliott Gyger, Natalie Williams, Andrew Ford, Lachlan Skipworth, Kate Neal, Peter de Jager, Sam Smith and Elizabeth Younan. In 2017, they recorded Lachlan Skipworth’s Echoes and Lines on their debut self-titled EP, released in partnership with ABC Classics and Musica Viva. Equally focused on inspiring a love of, and participation in, wind music in the next generation, Arcadia Winds have developed an hour-long show for the Musica Viva In Schools (MVIS) program. Entitled The Air I Breathe, it will showcase the magical transformation of breath into music to thousands of schoolchildren from 2017–20.