Camden Haven
Words & Music
Festival
The Performers
Profiles
Jeanell Carrigan
Musician, Educator, Academic, Published Author & Recording Artist.
(DCA, M. Mus, B.A. Mus., Dipl. Musiker (Germany) F.T.C.L.)
Dr Jeanell Carrigan AM is currently an Associate Professor in Collaborative Piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. She holds a Doctor of Creative Arts in the area of Australian post-1970 solo piano repertoire and in February 2026 released her thirty-seventh compact disc recording of Australian solo piano and chamber music.
Her publications include several books: Post-1970 Australian Piano Music (1997); Australian Piano Music of the last Twenty -Five Years (2006); Composing Against the Tide (2016); A Musical Missionary. The Life and Music of Dulcie Holland (2020), (co-authored with Dr. Rita Crews OAM); Australian Piano Music 1850-1950. A Guide to the Composers and Repertoire (2021); The Music of Meta Overman. Queen of Colour and Fantasy (2021); Breaking the Drought. Roy Agnew: Composer, Pianist, Teacher (co-authored with Dr. Rita Crews OAM), (2022); Amayzing May. The Life and Work of May Howlett (2024); A National Treasure. The Life and Achievements of Larry Sitsky (2024); Women of the Keys (2026) and over one hundred volumes of piano and chamber music written by Australian composers published by Wirripang, Australia.
In 2019 Jeanell was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (AM) for “For significant service to music education, particularly piano, and to the performing arts.” (Website: www.jeanellcarrigan.com)
Goetz Richter
Musician, Music Philosopher, Educator, Recording Artist, Competition Director
(Ph.D., B.A. (hons) Dipl. Musiker (Germany)
Dr Goetz Richter AM is a musician and philosopher at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he teaches violin performance and musical interpretation, courses in the philosophy of music and supervises postgraduate students. Born in Hamburg, Richter studied musical performance in Munich and Berne before settling in Australia in 1985.
Over the past four decades he pursued a successful international career as orchestra leader, violin soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. After completing his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 2007 he has published on the philosophy of music, musical performance, Nietzsche, Plato, Heidegger, Gadamer and Fink
Sydney Conservatorium String Orchestra
The Sydney Conservatorium of Music offers one of Australia’s most diverse and distinguished programs in string teaching, performance and research.
Their pedagogy is innovative yet grounded within the foremost 19th and 20th century teaching and performance traditions (Henri Verbrugghen, Robert Pikler, and Richard Goldner are among the famous string players and pedagogues who have been associated with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music).
Musicians in the ensemble are students completing one of the elite performance degrees led by Associate Professor, Dr. Goetz Richter AM.
Kevin Hunt
A major highlight of Dr Kevin Hunt's professional performing career is the 12 years of performing, touring and recording with Australia’s pre-eminent Jazz artist Don Burrows OAM, between 1995 -2007. This partnership produced two CD recordings, Eye To Eye Vol 1 & 2.In 1998, Kevin’s recording Kevin Hunt Plays JS Bach ABC CD recording received an ARIA nomination, and Kevin was awarded ‘Jazz Musician of the Year ‘.
In the 1990s, Kevin Hunt recorded on several of Janet Seidel’s recordings, most notably The Art of Lounge and The Way You Wear Your Hat. Kevin is especially honoured to be a featured pianist on the Seidel’s posthumous recording release You Are Here.
A particular focus of Kevin’s PhD was to play and compose music collaboratively with Australian Aboriginal performers using the sound qualities of the piano. This particular intercultural process of music making has recently been included into the Bachelor of Music curriculum with the formation of the Intercultural Aboriginal Music Ensemble at the Conservatorium.
In 2018 Kevin performs regularly in concert with Simon Tedeschi, Emma Pask, and the Kevin Hunt Trio. In 2020, Kevin was appointed head of Jazz and Improvised Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
George Palmer
George Palmer AM graduated in Arts and Law from Sydney University in 1970 and practised as a solicitor specializsing in commercial law. In 1974 he was called to the Bar and in 1986 he became a Queens Counsel. He was a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales from 2001 to 2011.
As a youth, Palmer studied piano with Frank Warbrick and Neta Maughan, both eminent teachers. He has been composing since he was a teenager but never sought to have his music performed. By chance, his music came to the attention of the ABC in 2003, resulting in an episode of Australian Story on ABC TV in 2004, a live broadcast by ABC FM of a concert of his orchestral music and the release by ABC Classics of a CD of his music, Attraction of Opposites.
Since then, he has received many commissions. In July 2007 Palmer was commissioned to write the Papal Mass for World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney. The Mass, Benedictus Qui Venit, for large choir, soloists and orchestra, was performed in the presence of the Pope and an audience of 350,000 with soloists Amelia Farrugia, soprano, and Andrew Goodwin, tenor, directed by Benjamin Bayl.
His most recent work, Cloudstreet, an opera adapted by Palmer from Tim Winton’s classic novel was premiered on 12 May 2016 by State Opera of South Australia with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Timothy Sexton the artistic director of SOSA and directed by Gale Edwards. The opera was hailed as “a resounding triumph” (The Australian) and received standing ovations from capacity audiences.
From 2004 – 2015 Palmer was the Chairman of Pacific Opera Company, a not-for profit company established to give Australia’s best young singers professional development and exposure. He is also a director of Ars Musica Australis. In 2010 Palmer was made a Member of the Order of Australia “for service to the law as a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and to music as a composer and through leadership roles with a range of cultural bodies.”
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​His compositions include the operas Cloudstreet and The Drovers Wife; a string quintet, Not Going Quietly; Concerto for Two Clarinets and Chamber Orchestra; Concertino for Two Guitars; a symphonic suite, The Beancounter; a symphonic fantasia, Incandescence; and several songs cycles: Letters from a Black Snake, Figures from an Urban Landscape, Mornings’s Minion, The Stubborn Heart; a piano quartet, The Way It Is, and a clarinet sonata, Black, White and a Little Blue.
Inga Simpson
Inga Simpson is an Australian novelist and nature writer.
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Her latest novel is Once we were wildlife. A tender, luminous collection of interconnected tales that explore love, longing and the wilderness - both within and around us. In this compulsive compilation of eleven stories and one poem - set against scorched landscapes, wild oceans, and rocky terrain - Simpson follows people on the edge of desire, heartbreak and change. Simpson's literary prowess keeps us riveted by the power of nature to shape human relationships and worlds. Melancholic and joyful, masterful and inspiring, this is contemporary fiction at its finest by Australia's foremost writer of the natural world, Inga Simpson.
Inga Simpson began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. In 2011, she took part in the Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program and, as a result, Hachette Australia published her first novel, Mr Wigg, in 2013.
Nest, Inga's second novel, was published in 2014 and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. Her 2024 literary thriller The Thinning was longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize and the 2025 Fiction Indie Book Award. Inga lives on the New South Wales south coast among trees.
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Mark Tredinnick
Dr Mark Tredinnick OAM, BA (Hons), LLB (Hons), MBA, PhD, is a celebrated poet, essayist, and teacher. His most recent collection of poems (his fourth) is Walking Underwater (June 2021). His many other works of poetry and prose include A Gathered Distance, Almost Everything I Know, Egret in a Ploughed Field, Bluewren Cantos, Fire Diary, The Blue Plateau, and The Little Red Writing Book.
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Since 2003, Tredinnick has published over two hundred works; poems, essays, reviews, papers, and books. For twenty-five years, he’s taught poetry and expressive writing at the University of Sydney, where he was poet in residence in 2018. He is a beloved teacher (of writing, literature and ecology), and he’s mentored many writers into print. His many honours include two of the world’s foremost poetry prizes, the Montreal and the Cardiff. “His is a bold, big-thinking poetry,” Sir Andrew Motion has written, “in which ancient themes (especially the theme of our human relationship with landscape) are recast and rekindled.” “One of our great poets of place,” Judy Beveridge has called him.
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In 2020, Tredinnick was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to literature and education.
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Tredinnick’s other honours include two State Premiers’ Literature Prizes, The Blake and Newcastle Poetry Prizes, the ACU and Ron Pretty Poetry Prizes, two Premiers’ Literature Awards, and the Calibre Essay Prize. The Blue Plateau, his landscape memoir, shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Prize.
Luke Fischer
Luke Fischer is an Australian poet, philosopher, writer, and scholar whose work bridges creative and academic inquiry. He was awarded a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney in 2008 and later completed postgraduate study in Creative Writing (Poetry). He is currently an Honorary Associate in the University’s Department of Philosophy.
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Fischer is the author of six books spanning poetry, philosophy, and fiction. His scholarly and creative works explore the deep relationship between poetic imagination and philosophical thinking, often challenging traditional divisions between inner and outer experience, subject and world. His books and poems have received wide critical attention in Australia and internationally, with reviews appearing in leading publications including the Times Literary Supplement and The Wall Street Journal.
He is the winner of the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize (2012) and has been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize on multiple occasions. His poetry has appeared in major journals and anthologies such as The Best Australian Poems and Award Winning Australian Writing. Fischer has also been invited to speak at prominent literary events including the Sydney Writers’ Festival and the Berlin International Literature Festival.
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A central concern of Fischer’s work is the philosophical significance of poetry. His research and writing suggest that poetry offers a distinctive mode of insight capable of addressing enduring philosophical problems, including the dualistic separation between self and world. His poetry collections, including Paths of Flight and A Personal History of Vision, explore non-dualistic ways of relating to nature and experience, while his recent work has taken an increasingly mythopoetic direction that synthesises philosophical speculation with imaginative storytelling.
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Alongside his writing, Fischer organises poetry and interdisciplinary arts events, reflecting his commitment to fostering meaningful cultural dialogue and community engagement through creative practice.
Also featuring...
Working with our main performers are some very special guests.
