Chineke! Chamber Ensemble

Chineke! chamber ensemble Musicians
Hannah White, violin 
Natalia Senior-Brown, viola
Ashok Klouda, cello
Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, double bass
Shantanique Moore, flute
Armand Djikoloum, oboe
Mebrakh Haughton-Johnson, clarinet
Linton Stephens, bassoon
Francisco Gomez, French horn
Gerard Aimontche, piano

Chineke! Foundation
Founder, Artistic & Executive Director Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE
General Manager Stephen Carpenter 
Projects Officer Ellie Argente
Learning & Participation Manager Ishani O'Connor

Chineke! image Eric Richmond
William Barton image Keith Saunders
Deborah Cheetham image Wayne Quilliam

About Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE
Double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE is the Founder, Artistic and Executive Director of the Chineke! Foundation. Chi-chi has been instrumental in creating opportunities for talented Black and ethnically diverse musicians through the Chineke! Orchestra and Chineke! Junior Orchestra, commissioning new works and championing historical composers of diverse heritage, and by establishing scholarships with the major UK conservatoires. She also created the ABO/RPS Salomon Prize, which celebrates ‘unsung heroes’ working in the ranks of British orchestras.

Chi-chi is a Professor and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Honorary Doctor at Chichester University and the Open University. In 2017, Chi-chi was awarded the OBE for Services to Music, and in 2021 she was named the first Ambassador for Intergenerational Music Making, a charity which aims to bring generations together through innovative music therapy and creative projects. She has featured in the Powerlist of Britain’s 100 Most Influential Black People for three consecutive years, from 2019 to 2021. As a broadcaster for TV and radio, Chi-chi has worked with the BBC, Sky Arts, Scala Radio and Classic FM.

About William Barton
William Barton is Australia’s leading didgeridoo player as well as a composer, instrumentalist and vocalist.

William started learning the instrument from his first learnt the uncle, Arthur Peterson, an elder of the Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga people and was working from an early age with traditional dance groups and fusion/rock jazz bands, orchestras, string quartets, and mixed ensembles.

Throughout his diverse career he has forged a path in the classical musical world, from the London and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras to historic events at Westminster Abbey for Commonwealth Day 2019, at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli and for the Beijing Olympics.

His awards include Winner of Best Original Score for a Mainstage Production at the 2018 Sydney Theatre Awards and Winner of Best Classical Album with an ARIA for Birdsong At Dusk in 2012. In 2021 he was the recipient of the prestigious Don Banks Music Award from the Australia Council.

With his prodigious musicality and building on his Kalkadunga heritage, William has vastly expanded the horizons of the didgeridoo.

About Deborah Cheetham AO
Deborah Cheetham, Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer and educator has been a leader and pioneer in the Australian arts landscape for more than 25 years. In the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Cheetham was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), for “distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance”.

In 2009, Deborah Cheetham established Short Black Opera as a national not-for-profit opera company devoted to the development of Indigenous singers. The following year she produced the premiere of her first opera Pecan Summer. This landmark work was Australia’s first Indigenous opera and has been a vehicle for the development of a new generation of Indigenous opera singers.

In March 2015 she was inducted onto the Honour Roll of Women in Victoria and in April 2018 received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia for her pioneering work and achievements in the music.

Ms Cheetham’s Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace, premiered to sold out audiences on-country at the Port Fairy Spring Festival in October 2018 and at Hamer Hall in Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on June 15, 2019.

Deborah Cheetham’s list of commissions for major Australian ensembles continues to grow including works for the Victorian Opera, Sydney Philharmonia Choir, Orchestra Victoria, Melbourne ensemble, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Australian String Quartet, West Australian Symphony Orchestra String Quartet, Rubiks Collective, Plexus Ensemble, the Goldner Quartet and Flinders Quartet.

In 2019 Deborah Cheetham established the One Day in January project designed to develop and nurture Indigenous orchestral musicians. In this same year she received the Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award for service to music in Australia, the Merlyn Myer Prize for Composition, was inducted onto the Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll and received Life Time Membership at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

Deborah was the 2019 winner of the prestigious Melbourne Prize for Music and was named Limelight Magazine’s Critics Choice Artist of the Year.

In 2020 Deborah Cheetham was the 2020 Composer-in-residence for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and commenced her appointment at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University as Professor of Music practice.

In 2021 Deborah Cheetham began a five year appointed as First Nations Chair of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Deborah Cheetham was the 2020 recipient of the JC Williamson Life Time Achievement Award which recognises an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the Australian live entertainment and performing arts industry, and helped to shape the future of our industry for the better.