Gabriella Smart blazes a brilliant path for Australian music to the world, from Adelaide's Elder Conservatorium

Gabriella Smart founded Soundstream Contemporary Music Ensemble, in residence at Adelaide University, since 1996.
Image coutesy The Adelaidean, University of Adelaide

Gabriella Smart, award-winning pianist and passionate leading exponent of contemporary Australian music, has been linked to Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide.as student, teacher and for her 2018 PhD on new music, curation and Australian musical history.

Smart, who studied with Eleonora Sivan at the Elder Conservatorium, made her 1998 solo debut at the International Barossa Music Festival, winning a Sounds Australia award for best performance of an Australian work. In 2002, she was awarded a fellowship from the South Australian government and the next year performed solo recitals in the Melbourne International Festival and La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Smart has played extensively in Australia and internationally, giving world premieres of works by eminent composers Michael Nyman and Tan Dun. She also has introduced more than 40 works for solo piano by Australian and international composers in Australia, Europe and China, and collaborated with musicians as diverse as Brett Dean, Elena Kats Chernin, Erkki Veltheim, Jon Rose and Tamara Anna Cislowska.

As an improviser, she has worked and performed with such luminaries as Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance, Academy Award winner for film music: The Gladiator), Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes), Alvin Curran, Cat Hope, Derek Pascoe and Johannes Sistermanns as part of UnPiano Trio, and Paul Grabowsky. 

Her specialisation in contemporary music has seen her perform with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Australian Dance Theatre, Leigh Warren and Dancers, State Theatre of South Australia and Ihos Experimental Theatre Troupe. Smart founded Soundstream Contemporary Music Ensemble, in residence at Adelaide University, since 1996. She has curated four music festivals and 20 concert series, and started the Soundstream emerging composer forum.

Among her many accolades were four prestigious awards in 2019: Art music award for excellence in music (Australian Performing Rights Association and Australian Music Centre), the Paris residency and an Artist Grant from The Australia Council for the Arts, and a South Australian government creative fellowship. In 2018, she was awarded a Prelude Composer Residency (Australia) and a UNESCO City of Music residency in Katowice, Poland. Previously, Smart received a Churchill fellowship (2010), national Helpmann Award (2009), and Ruby Award for best event in South Australia in 2009.