20 April 2026
AYO alumna Charlotte Miles’ full circle moment
When Charlotte Miles steps onto the stage with the Australian Youth Orchestra this July in Sydney and Darwin, the moment carries a symmetry that feels quietly monumental. Still early in her international career yet already performing at the highest level, the Australian cellist returns to the orchestra that helped shape her musical identity, travelling with them to a place she has never been before, carrying a concerto she has waited years to play.
Despite having performed concerts across every other Australian state and territory, Darwin has remained one final gap in Charlotte Miles’ map of Australia – until now.
“This will be my first time in Darwin,” says the Germany-based cellist, looking ahead to the concert on 17 July.
“I’ve given concerts in every other Australian state and territory, so after the NT I’ll have collected the whole set!”
Charlotte Miles, cellist
AYO has not visited Darwin in more than three decades and Miles is particularly conscious of what it means to share this repertoire with a Northern Territory audience. She says she is “really looking forward to sharing this extraordinary music, and the AYO’s infectious energy, with an audience that the AYO hasn’t visited for the last 30 years.”
Shostakovich: brutal and beautiful
At the heart of the program is Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, a work famously unrelenting for both soloist and listener. For Miles, this concerto has occupied a long‑held place in her imagination.
“It’s one of those pieces, like the Schumann concerto, that I’d heard so many times growing up and always wanted to learn, but never had,” she explains. “Now finally I have the opportunity.”
That opportunity comes with formidable physical and emotional demands. Asked to describe the piece, her first instinct is succinct: “Exhaustion is the first word that comes to mind.” Yet that exhaustion is inseparable from what she finds so compelling about the music.
“It’s brutal and beautiful, intimate and desolate,” she says. “It’s a testament to the intimacy and pain of life under oppression, but I always feel there’s this amazingly brave humanity glowing just beneath the surface of all its terror.”
Miles speaks of the concerto as a constant negotiation – between lyricism and austerity, vulnerability and force. “Sometimes you want to play a phrase as ‘beautifully’ as you can,” she reflects, “but there’s always an acrid pain about it that demands to be expressed as well. The real beauty lies in striking the balance between them – man and machine, human and regime.”
Reuniting with Antony Hermus
The July performances also mark a meaningful reunion with conductor Antony Hermus, with whom Miles has previously worked at a pivotal moment in her AYO journey.
“My favourite AYO program I ever did was in February 2018,” recalls Miles, who was part of the AYO Flagship Orchestra which performed Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in Melbourne and Geelong under Hermus’ baton. “It was unforgettable.”
Returning to work with him now feels like a full‑circle moment.
“It’s unbelievably special to be able to come full‑circle this July by working with Antony again, and by reuniting with the AYO family – I just can’t wait!”
Charlotte Miles, on performing with the Australian Youth Orchestra
Adding another layer of intrigue, Miles’ upcoming participation in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in May means she may end up performing the same concerto with Hermus on two continents within weeks. He will conduct the final round of the competition.
“If I do make it through to the finals, then he and I get the opportunity to play Shostakovich together twice,” she says. “And if I don’t, then I’m glad I’ll still get to perform it with him in Australia with AYO.”
Growing up with AYO
Miles’ connection with the Australian Youth Orchestra runs deep and personal. She traces it back to her very first National Music Camp in 2018.
“I fell in love with AYO from my very first NMC,” she says, recalling an intense and formative stretch between the ages of 14 and 19. Over those five years, she was immersed in a range of programs: multiple National Music Camps, Flagship seasons, Chamber Players in Brisbane, MSO and ASO Fellowship programs, a Momentum Ensemble tour, and AYO’s 2019 International Tour.
That tour has a special resonance now. “We actually played Shostakovich then,” she notes, “with the amazing Daniel Müller‑Schott as the soloist.” Years later, she returns to the same work not as a student watching from within the orchestra, but as the soloist herself.
Australia, then back to Europe
After the Sydney concert, Miles’ Australian itinerary continues north. She heads straight to Cairns for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, which in 2026 relocates there for the first time in its 35‑year history.
“It’s unprecedented and very exciting territory,” she says. The festival, she adds, “keeps you on your toes – but it’s a hugely rewarding challenge, and I love it to pieces.”
From there come rare weeks of family time in Melbourne, before returning to Europe for a residency at Schloss Elmau with cellist Gautier Capuçon, as part of her role as a laureate of his Foundation. She jokes about referring to the Bavarian luxury spa resort as a “responsibility” – but the work, she makes clear, remains central.
Why chamber music still matters
Even as she enters the final, intense phase of preparation for the Queen Elisabeth Competition, chamber music remains non‑negotiable for Miles. “I recently performed a string trio concert in Hagen in central Germany and a piano quartet concert in Paris with the Capuçon Foundation,” says Charlotte.
Agreeing to these concerts was a deliberate choice. “There’s never been a better time for me to remember why I’m doing all of this in the first place,” she says. Making music alongside close colleagues, she believes, offers something irreplaceable.
“The experience of making gorgeous music with great colleagues is often so beautifully, spontaneously, life‑affirmingly creative that it always leaves wonderful traces on your musical soul.”
Charlotte Miles on playing chamber music
This July, those traces – of youth, resilience, collaboration and courage – will resonate powerfully in Shostakovich’s raw, unflinching concerto. For audiences, Charlotte Miles’ return to AYO is more than a homecoming. It’s an invitation to witness an artist stepping confidently into her next chapter and bringing brave music to Brave New Worlds.
