Threads of Time

Take a front-row seat and experience the wonderful world of chamber music with Australia’s rising musical stars.
Hear the diversity of wind and brass quintets and string quartets, in this opportunity to get up close and personal with the instruments of the orchestra.
This year’s program in Melbourne features a deeply moving new work by Melbourne composer Lee Bradshaw—a string octet commissioned in memory of Emanuel (Manny) Arcaro by his family, friends and the Flinders Quartet Syndicate, supported by AYO. The Flinders Quartet, renowned for their rich sound and innovative programming, will guide and perform alongside AYO’s musicians, supported by a mental health awareness program that fosters open, meaningful conversations.
We are proud to partner with the Flinders Quartet on their Healing and Awakening project, which commissions a powerful musical tribute to mental health and wellbeing.
Flinders Quartet Healing and Awakening project
Recognising the challenges many creatives face with mental health, Flinders Quartet has partnered with Manny’s mum, Dani, and AYO Chamber Players to support young musicians and artists in seeking and receiving help.
This October, during Mental Health Week, a new string octet by Lee Bradshaw will be premiered as part of the AYO Chamber Players program by the Flinders Quartet and AYO musicians. We are honoured to partner with the Flinders Quartet on their Healing and Awakening initiative, which offers professional development in mental health awareness for all participants and exploring how music can foster open, meaningful conversations.
To ensure this work continues, Flinders Quartet has established a fund dedicated to supporting mental health initiatives for young creatives. Your generosity can help bring this vital project to life. Further information can be found here.
Join us in raising awareness and offering hope, because music has the power to heal.
Chamber Players is supported by the Annie Danks Trust.
Digital Program:
Artists:
Ensemble-in-Residence
Flinders Quartet (FQ) is instantly recognisable as one of Australia’s most loved chamber music ensembles. They are a quartet for the 21st century and a highly respected force in Australian chamber music, entering their third decade with acknowledged musical skill and maturity.
For almost twenty-five years, FQ has followed a unique path and lives up to their motto of “caring for tradition, daring to be different” through a busy schedule encompassing live and online performances, commissioning, recording, education and mentorship programs including the successful composer development programs ‘Ascend’ and ‘Emerge’, and outreach activities through their artistic patronage of John Noble’s Itet regional quartet program, Resonance String Orchestra, and Musica Viva’s Strike a Chord championship.
Composer
Lee Bradshaw is an Australian composer whose work spans opera, orchestral, chamber, and cross-genre projects. His opera Zarqa Al Yamama (2024) was the first Western opera sung in Arabic and the first opera ever staged in Saudi Arabia, a landmark production featuring Dame Sarah Connolly, the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno and the Dresdner Sinfoniker. His Requiem “For Those Left Behind” (2024) will be performed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in September (2025), and is the first Australian classical work premiered in Egypt, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Australian–Egyptian diplomatic relations.
According to The Standard (UK), Bradshaw is “a composer with an ear for both scale and intimacy, unafraid to take on historic subjects with contemporary resonance.”
His music has been performed internationally by Dame Sarah Connolly, violinist Baiba Skride, cellist Harriet Krijgh, Quartetto Energie Nove, the Flinders String Quartet, Orchestra Svizzera Italiana, Ivan Vukčević, Amira Medunjanin, and others. Beyond classical composition, Bradshaw leads the progressive rock project Horizon, whose 2025 album release includes the final studio performances of Noiseworks guitarist Stuart “Chet” Fraser, alongside Brett Garsed and Angus Burchall of the John Farnham Band.
Writing on Bradshaw’s music, OperaWire described it as “striking for its fusion of tradition with modernity, moving between intimacy and grandeur with clarity of voice.”
Anne CAWRSE in spaces between
BEETHOVEN 2 movements String Quartet Op.95 by Beethoven
EWALD – Quintet No.2 (complete)
Louisa TREWARTHA – Selections from Suite Water
Lee BRADSHAW – Four Rooms
Holly HARRISON Swoop
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet Op. 80
Elizabeth YOUNAN – Shoreditch Grind
Esa-Pekka SALONEN Memoria
Valerie COLEMAN – Red Clay and Mississippi Delta
Lee BRADSHAW – Four Rooms