The music I've become passionate about over the last decade is that of 18th- and 19th-century Scotland and Australia. In 2018 I completed a Research Master's degree at the University of Melbourne, creating a series of recitals and writing a thesis entitled "Sweet Sounds and Good Taste: Italian Influences on Modality in the Music of Eighteenth-Century Scotland".
I am currently a staff member at the University of Melbourne where I tutor in Music History, The Research Process for Musicians, and Baroque Ensemble. I have recently completed a PhD thesis focused on the historically informed performance practices of Scottish-Australian music manuscripts collections. I looked at three collections in particular: the Laing Collection (Tasmania), the Findlay Collection (Upper Murray, Victoria), and the Baillie Collection (Rockhampton/ Sydney).
I was the recipient of the 2019 National Folk Fellowship offered through the National Library of Australia and the National Folk Festival. The recording of the fellowship research was made into an ABC Classics album with Evergreen Ensemble entitled 'One Hundred Days Away'. Also in 2019 I co-produced a second ABC Classics album of Scottish-Australian music, 'Curious Caledonians', featuring Evergreen Ensemble, Neal Peres da Costa, Daniel Yeadon, and members of Concerto Caledonia from Glasgow, Scotland. I recorded three more albums showcasing my PhD repertoire which were released in 2023 and 2024: Wintergarden Fantasias (ABC Classics), Your Loving Father, and The Bell Birds of Scotland.
Grants, Fellowships & Awards
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2022 John Hodgson Scholarship, Uni. Melb.
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2022 Miegunyah Project Award recipient
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2022 Macgeorge Travelling Scholarship
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2022 Folk Fellowship Showcase Curator
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2020 Academic Assistantship, Uni. Melb.
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2020 Co-director Baroque Winter Academy, Uni. Melb.
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2019 National Folk Fellowship
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2018 Faculty Small Grant recipient, Uni. Melb.
Academic Publications
Edited by Rosemary Richards and Julja Szuster, with contributions from Julja Szuster, Rosemary Richards, Shane Lestideau, Kirstine Moffat, Clare Gleeson, Heather Blasdale Clarke, Elizabeth Nichol, Matthew Stephens, Aline Scott-Maxwell and John Whiteoak. 2022.
Music-lovers from Australia and New Zealand have collected and bound sheet music and handwritten music since the earliest years of settlement. In these nine essays, the authors discuss music and dance collections found in libraries, historic houses, archives and homes, explaining what these cherished artefacts reveal about the owners, their emotional life and their musical practice. Beautifully illustrated, and with suggestions for how these collections might be further explored or disseminated, this is a landmark book in the history of music in private life.
The Arthour–Wight Manuscript: A Collection of Scottish Baroque Music in Regional Australia
2025 Publication for Musicology Australia. Link to article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08145857.2025.2540694?af=R#abstract
A music manuscript dated 1734 was ‘discovered’ in a National Trust of Australia property in Goulburn, New South Wales by a member of the public in the 1980s. Containing the signatures of two women—Margrat Arthour and Helen Wight—the small practice book comprises Arthour’s music collection of instrumental tunes, keyboard arrangements, and songs. This article outlines the research process resulting in the identification of the two women and an exploration of their personal lives in Edinburgh and the East Lothian region. Arthour, niece to one of Scotland’s most famous musicians and related to key characters involved in the 1715 Jacobite uprising, is a fascinating yet entirely forgotten player in Scottish musical history. Part of Edinburgh high society from the 1730s onwards, she was associated with the early chapters of the country’s first musical society—a melting pot of local talent mixed with visiting virtuosi from continental Europe. Those interested in the ‘drawing room style’ of the late Scottish baroque period are here presented with the repertoire of a young Edinburgh lady written at a time when published music and public concerts were still a novelty in the city.