Claire Edwardes

Her award-winning performances combine theatrical energy with charismatic, original interpretation. In 1999 she won the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Award; in 2005 the MCA/Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music; and in 2007, 2012 and 2016 the AMC/APRA Art Music Award for Excellence by an Individual, for her commitment to Australian music. In 2014 she received a two-year Australia Council Music Fellowship.

In 1997 she graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (BMus Hons I) as Student of the Year, studying with Daryl Pratt and Richard Miller. A Nuffic Huygens Dutch Government Scholarship and later a Queen Elizabeth Trust Award funded further study abroad. Based in Europe from 1999 to 2006, she completed a Master of Music with Richard Jansen at the Rotterdam Conservatory, then with Peter Prommel and Jan Pustjens at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and attended summer schools including Acanthe Academy with Steven Schick and the Darmstadt International Summer Courses. She won first prize at the 2000 Tromp International Percussion Competition, the 2001 Vriendenkrans Instrumental Competition at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and the 2001 Llangollen International Instrumentalist competition in Wales.

As soloist she appeared with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Radio Chamber Orchestra, Liverpool Philharmonic and Brabants Orkest, and worked regularly with Slagwerk Den Haag, Asko Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble and Ensemble Modern. She gave solo recitals at the Concertgebouw and Queen Elizabeth Hall and featured at Huddersfield, Donaueschingen and Gaudeamus, collaborating closely with composers including Michel van der Aa, Louis Andriessen, Steve Reich, Peter Eötvös, Harrison Birtwistle and James MacMillan.

Returning to Sydney in 2006, she became co-artistic director of Ensemble Offspring, which she had helped found in 1995, and sole artistic director from 2015. In 2016 the group won the APRA Art Music Award for Excellence by an Organisation. Performance highlights include concertos with the Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, solo appearances at the Sydney Festival, MONA FOMA and 10 Days on the Island, and collaborations ranging from Mike Patton to Guy Ben-Ary, the Australian Art Orchestra and the Australian String Quartet.

Her catalogue includes the solo albums One, Flash and Coil, together with The Axe Manual (Harrison Birtwistle and Nicolas Hodges) on Metronome and the chamber release Kammerbox on ABC Classics. As a composer she has written music for the 2017 Vivid Sydney Maritime Museum animation and works for the AMEB percussion syllabus. Endorsed by Mike Balter Mallets and Adams Percussion, she teaches percussion and composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Australian National Academy of Music.

From Play School to the Sydney Opera House main stage, she has been called ‘the sorceress of percussion’ (City News, Canberra). The only Australian to win the APRA Art Music Award for Excellence by an Individual three times, she moves between artistic direction of Ensemble Offspring, concerto work with Australian, New Zealand and European orchestras, genre-spanning solo concerts, teaching, hundreds of premieres—including works by Harrison Birtwistle and Elena Kats-Chernin—and advocacy for gender equity in music.