Meet the Core Artists
Paul Nicolaou
Artistic Director & Harpist
“Rapidly emerging as one of Australia’s most exciting young artists” (ABC Classic), Paul Nicolaou is a multi-award-winning harpist and composer based in Sydney, Australia. Praised as “brilliant” (classikON), he has quickly gained international recognition as a creative and virtuosic young artist, receiving accolades including the 2026 APRA Professional Development Award for Screen Composition, 2026 Eva Pascoe Award (Performance), First Prize in the 2023 National Youth Music Arranging Competition, and 2021 Monash University Emerging Composer Prize.
A graduate from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with First Class Honours, Paul studied under internationally celebrated harpist Alice Giles AM. He has quickly established himself as an accomplished, versatile and sought-after performer, appearing as Guest Principal Harp with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Auckland Philharmonia, as well as Omega Ensemble, Ensemble Apex and more.
With a strong interest in music for interactive media, Paul specialises in analysing, arranging, and performing music from games, and is founder and Artistic Director of Australia’s premier professional game music ensemble, Narrata Collective. He was a recipient of Creative Australia’s Music Australia Export Development Fund, where he studied game composition with GRAMMY-winning composer Austin Wintory in Vienna. His Honours study investigated facilitating expansion of the canonical harp repertoire through analysis, arrangement and canonical integration of video game scores.
Anna da Silva Chen
Leader & Solo Violinist
Anna da Silva Chen is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading concert violinists, known for her passion and virtuosity as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, concertmaster and director. She coleads the Alma Moodie Quartet and has been a member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra since 2024.
As a soloist, Anna has performed with many of Australia’s major orchestras including the Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Tasmanian and Canberra Symphony Orchestras as well as various regional, youth and community orchestras. Overseas, she made her German debut in 2020 with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, toured Spain as a soloist with the SCM Wind Symphony Orchestra, and led Ligeti’s Melodien in Italy’s Chigiana International Festival 2024.
By the age of 15, Anna won Australia’s Kendall National Violin Competition, the National Youth Concerto Competition, Fine Music FM’s Young Virtuoso Award, and was a semi-finalist in the Menuhin International Violin Competition. She went on to win the overall prize of KPO’s NSW Concerto Competition and the Sydney Conservatorium’s Concerto Competition, among many others.
Deeply motivated as a chamber musician and curator, Anna embraces complex and neglected works across many historical periods. She has performed as guest violinist with the Australia Ensemble, Omega Ensemble, Australia Piano Quartet and Ensemble Q, as soloist, guest director, and concertmaster of Ensemble Apex, and as a festival artist in the Canberra International, Tasmanian, Brycefield Estate, and Newcastle Music Festivals.
Julia Hill
Principal Violin
Recipient of the prestigious MEXT Research Scholarship, New Colombo Plan Scholarship, and ThinkSwiss Scholarship, violinist Julia Hill has established herself internationally as a multi-faceted musician. Having graduated Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University with the 2020 Conservatorium Medal, she is now a Master of Arts (Performance) candidate on full scholarship at Tokyo University of the Arts.
With a strong passion for interdisciplinary performance, Julia has collaborated with composers, artists and directors to create unique artistic experiences. Whilst living in Japan under the support of the New Colombo Plan Scholarship, she collaborated with Japanese visual artist Yuki Horie, presenting a performance of improvised art and music designed to promote the audience’s wellbeing through mindfulness. Additionally, the ThinkSwiss Scholarship took her to Geneva where her collaboration with five emerging composers resulted in a multi-disciplinary performance featuring new works accompanying a film about the effects of climate change. In 2024, as a featured artist at Brisbane Music Festival, Julia combined theatre, composition and solo violin music to create a solo show, Renaissance, based on the theme of recovery from mental health difficulties.
Julia holds casual violin positions with the Adelaide, Melbourne and Queensland Symphony Orchestras and has toured with Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra.
Noah Lawrence
Principal Cello
Hailing from Bendigo, Victoria, Noah has performed side-by-side with most of Australia’s professional orchestras, as a chamber musician and soloist at the 2024 Bendigo Chamber Music Festival, and as an artist at the 2024 Port Fairy Spring Festival. He was the principal cello of the Australian Youth Orchestra in the same year. 2025 saw him embedded within the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as their Cello Fellow, performing in main stage concerts throughout the season, as well as giving chamber music performances and taking part in education and outreach programs across the state. To begin 2026, he will return to the Bendigo Chamber Festival as the soloist in a Vivaldi cello concerto, before taking up the role of SSO Cello Fellow again: he was invited to return for a second year.
Noah is at home in diverse musical contexts - he performed Wagner’s opera The Valkyrie with Melbourne Opera in 2022, and has recorded for the soundtrack of major films such as Predator: Badlands and Anaconda (2025). Other projects have seen him backing a jazz ensemble and a metal band. Noah’s goal is always to create connection through performance, and he enjoys speaking about music in order to make it more accessible, as well as exploring repertoire from diverse sources.
Noah completed three years of study under Howard Penny at the Australian National Academy of Music, and plays a cello made by Castlemaine luthier Rainer Beilharz in 2024.
Ronan Apcar
Principal Piano
Ronan Apcar is a pianist and composer with a reputation of versatility, edge, and tenacity. His love for music across many styles – jazz to the avant-garde, contemporary art music to house music – translates into his open-minded, exciting, and unique work as a musician. Described as "a talent beyond his age" (Limelight Magazine) and “a force to be reckoned with” (ClassikON), Ronan is known for his diverse musicmaking practice that includes performing, composing, arranging, improvising, curating, and collaborating.
Ronan performs in an eclectic mix of concerts and festivals in both intimate and large-scale venues across metropolitan and regional NSW, Victoria, and the ACT. In addition to the full range of the piano, his practice has grown to include electronics and other instruments in experimental, improvised, and collaborative settings both musical and interdisciplinary.
Various recent projects range from concerto soloist with Ensemble Apex to a multimedia DJ set for the opening of Machine Hall; collaborative performances in festivals including Sydney Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, Shepparton Festival; with organisations such as Moorambilla Voices, Luminescence Chamber Singers, Gondwana Voices, Opera in the Country; and forthcoming records include a solo electronic improvised EP and concerto recordings with Ensemble Apex. Ronan appears as both soloist and collaborator in grassroots musical series playing experimental, electronic, and improvised music. Ronan is also the pianist with Ensemble Offspring.
Miriam Cooney
Principal Oboe
Miriam began oboe lessons at eight years old, studying with Celia Craig, Mark Bruwel, Nicola Bell, and Shefali Pryor. While completing her performance degree at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Miriam attended a semester exchange at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under the tutelage of Professor Max Artved. Miriam was the 2024 Oboe Fellow with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and was on contract with SSO as Tutti Oboe in 2024 and 2025. She has played as Guest Principal Oboe and Tutti Oboe with the Tasmania Symphony Orchestra, as well as Bass Oboe with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Miriam is passionate about chamber music, and is an enthusiastic co-founder of Wollemi Chamber Society. She attended the Australian Festival of Chamber Music Winter Masterclass with Wollemi Quintet in 2022, and participated in Australian Youth Orchestra's Chamber Players in 2023.