Elizabeth Jigalin, composer and pianist
Elizabeth Jigalin has created music for a variety of contexts in collaboration with festivals, ensembles, technologists, artists across disciplines and community groups.
She has held several composer in residence positions for programs including Sydney Youth Orchestras (2014), Bundanon Trust (2019), Campbelltown Arts Centre (2020) and Voices of Women (2020-). Select commissioners of her work include Lost in Books, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Moorambilla Voices, Kaldor Public Arts Projects and Ensemble Offspring. She has also composed and performed on the piano new soundtracks for over 20 silent films/shorts as part of Australia’s Silent Film Festival. Her music has been premiered at festivals including VIVID, Extended Play Festival, Fishers Kid’s Festival, Darmstädter Ferienkurse and Pacific Alliance of Music Schools. She has also devised several interactive foyer installations and music experiences for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, City Recital Hall, Australian Museum and Casula Arts Powerhouse.
Awards include Ars Musica Australis Scholarship, First Prize Canberra Composition Competition, First Prize Unbound Flute Festival Competition and while a student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music she was awarded the Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize and Ted & Susan Meller Scholarship. Additionally she has been a selected participant of several composer development programs including Australian Art Orchestras Mentorship program, Soundstreams Emerging Composers Forum, nonclassical academy (UK), Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt.
As an extension of her creative and collaborative drive, she is the founder and director of creative music collective The Music Box Project. In 2020, TMBP was awarded the APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Experimental Music for Shallow Listening – a project that premiered at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music and featured her music theatre work ‘prelude & pickle’ (2019). In 2021, TMBP presented two sold out performances of this project as recipients of the Create NSW’s Play the City fund.
Christina Leonard, saxophone
Christina is one of Australia’s leading Saxophonists. She performs with key Australian chamber music ensembles, as well as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Opera Ballet Orchestra and is a featured soloist with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.
Christina has made numerous recordings and live radio broadcasts, notably with ABC Classic FM. She regularly commissions and performs contemporary music and is the first Australian to be endorsed as an International Artist with Japanese instrument maker Yanagisawa.
Christina holds a post graduate performance degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London and a Masters of Music Performance from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she lectures in Saxophone.
https://www.christinaleonard.com.au/
Danica Hobden, guitar
Danica Hobden is a guitarist, improvisor and teacher based in Sydney. She enjoys crossing musical boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and classical genres as well as interdisciplinary explorations into theatre and film. Danica is currently working on various projects including recording, gigging and composing for modern jazz ensemble Limbless; performing with Celtic Rock band Bread and Seaweed and New Music duo dnka+zilwith composer Elizabeth Jigalin, as well as playing guitar, banjo and mandolin in pit orchestras, most recently at the State Theatre and Hayes Theatre Co.
https://www.danicahobden.com/about