Emily Granger & Sally Walker
Biography Emily Granger & Sally Walker
Emily Granger
American-born, Australian-based Emily Granger effortlessly straddles the worlds of classical, popular, and art music – including glittering appearances with Yo-Yo Ma, Sarah Blasko, and Renée Fleming. Emily’s considerable talent finds her equally at home in intimate chamber recitals and thrilling performances of daring new works. Emily has performed recitals from Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center and has appeared with the Chicago, Queensland, Sydney, and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras. Her debut solo album, In Transit (AVIE Records), was Featured Album on ABC Classic and 2MBS Fine Music Sydney. The album was praised by BBC Music Magazine as "beautiful" and Limelight Magazine as "an impressive debut" and has so far reached more than 800,000 people through 3,000,000+ streams.
Recent performances include appearances with Ensemble Offspring, guitarist Andrew Blanch, percussionist Claire Edwardes, Sydney Dance Company, Australian Debussy Trio, Nexas Quartet, Sydney Art Quartet, Sydney Chamber Choir, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra and many more, in performances for Melbourne Recital Centre, Musica Viva Australia, Musica Viva Tasmania, Sydney Fringe Festival, Orange Chamber Music Festival, Music in the Regions, Bellingen Muse, and more.
Emily has performed for Musica Viva Morning Masters, UKARIA Cultural Centre, Melbourne Recital Centre, Sydney Festival, Ravinia Festival, Orange Chamber Music Festival, Craven Creek Festival, Bellingen Festival, Ear Taxi Festival, and Lyon & Healy 150th Birthday Festival.
Dedicated to expanding the repertoire for harp, Emily was a Finalist in the 2021 Art Music Awards for Performance of the Year. Her interest in new music began during her studies at IU where she spent three years performing with the IU New Music Ensemble. While living in Chicago she performed with Ensemble Dal Niente, Fulcrum Point New Music Ensemble and at the Ear Taxi Festival. Emily has premiered works by Ross Edwards, Elena Kats-Chernin, Sally Whitwell, Sally Greenaway, Richard Mills, Bernard Andrès, Alfredo Rolando-Ortiz, Hilary Purrington, Nicholas Davies, Elliott Bark, Tristan Coelho, Mark Oliverio, and Martin Kay. She has a close relationship with Ensemble Offspring and continues collaborating with it’s Artistic Director and percussionist, Claire Edwardes.
Emily’s students have been awarded prizes at the Mexican International Harp Competition, American Harp Society Chicago Solo Competition and have held positions with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, Australian Youth Orchestra, Sydney Youth Orchestra, Midwest Young Artists and Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra. Emily served on the faculty at VanderCook College of Music, British School of Chicago, MLC School and Chicago Harp Ensemble. She has taught at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and presented masterclasses and educational residencies at Indiana University, New York University, Kansas University, American Harp Society Lyra Chapter, Play on Philly!, Vanderbilt University and American Harp Society National Conference.
Emily grew up in Kansas City Missouri where she began the harp at age 11. She participated in the Youth Symphony of Kansas City and spent many summers at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. She earned her Bachelor of Music from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music where she studied with famed pedagogue, Susann McDonald, and her Masters of Music from the Chicago College of the Performing Arts studying with Principal Harp of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sarah Bullen. Granger later served as the Principal Harp of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra and National Orchestral Institute.
When not traveling the world concertizing, you can find the avid hiker in the backcountry. Granger successfully walked Te Araroa - a 3,000-kilometer trail across New Zealand taking 138 days to complete the journey from Cape Reinga to Bluff. In addition, Emily has walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago (900-kilometers) in January 2018 as well as a through hike of California's John Muir Trail, the Great North Walk, Overland Track, and climbed 14 of Colorado's highest mountains in one week and Australia's 15 highest mountains in three days.
Sally Walker
was Grand-finalist in the Leonardo de Lorenzo International Flute Competition (Italy), won 2nd Prize in the Friedrich Kuhlau International Flute Competition (Germany) and was awarded prizes from the DAAD, Ian Potter Cultural Fund and the Queen’s Trust.
She has toured and recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, is a former Principal Flute of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss and has performed as Guest Principal Flute with the City of Birmingham Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, NDR Radio Philharmonie Hannover and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She has performed in the Festivals of Salzburg, Lucerne, Edinburgh, Tanglewood and the London Proms. From 2003 – 2005 she played full-time with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and in the following year was appointed Lecturer of Flute and Academic Studies at the University of Newcastle.
She is deeply committed to chamber music and is the Artistic Director of the ‘Twilight Musical Dialogues’ series. Alongside her chamber music projects, Sally devotes herself passionately to both Early and Contemporary Music and has released three CDs with pianist Philip Mayers: ‘Hemispheres’ (featuring many works written for her), ‘Kaleidoscope’ and ‘French Miniatures’. She has performed in over twenty countries and numerous composers have dedicated works to her. In 2013 she premiered Andrew Ford’s composition for her entitled ‘Once upon a time there were two brothers’ with the Shanghai String Quartet at the Melbourne Festival. In 2014 she premiered Andrew Chubb’s ‘Berceuse’ (both the flute and piano and flute and guitar versions. In 2015, she premiered Elena Kats-Chernin’s Concerto ‘Night and Now’, written for her, with the Darwin Symphony conducted by Matthew Wood, with subsequent performances with the Zelman Memorial Symphony and Newcastle Youth Orchestra. She is very much looking forward to performing in Townsville for the first time.
"Australian flautist Sally Walker has been hailed as ‘master of both the early wooden as well as the silver flute…atmospheric, fine musicianship’ (Hamburger Rundeschau); ‘godly flexibility and colouring in her most soul-stirring tone formation….breathtaking musicality’ (Die Rheinpfalz); ‘sustained brilliance’ (Canberra Times).
