Diana Weston
Ensemble Director
Diana Weston biog 2024
Harpsichordist Diana Weston is the founder of the ensemble Thoroughbass. From its inception in 2009, as director of the ensemble Diana has been singularly interested in the promotion of music that is not generally heard for one reason or another – initially women composers from the baroque, later, works that have been forgotten or fallen out of fashion. Into this category falls her resurrection of music from the archives of the National Library’s Stewart Simonds collection of colonial sheet music, some of which has been recorded and distributed to museums and historic homes devoted to this period. Through her commissions, many new works for harpsichord and period instruments have been created, and many have been dedicated to her.
Diana is a recording artist for the Australian recording label Wirripang which has published nearly all her recorded music. These works are regularly aired on radio. Diana has contributed to the Australian music scene through these and in radio interviews, as producer of her concert series, in her regional appearances, and in her research and promotion of early keyboards such as the ‘square’ piano forte.
Diana is particularly interested in the interconnections of music and other artforms and has designed projects where painting, poetry, children’s stories and scent have been integral. She is adept at making arrangements that shed new light on the familiar.
In her past life, Diana practised medicine.
Mary Sambell
Mary & Me
Mary Sambell graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Diploma in Education majoring in Music and English. For 5 years Mary taught classroom music in high schools, then in 1986 began private piano teaching. Her business “Mary’s Piano Studio” is highly successful and incorporates piano teaching and music lessons in theory, history, composition, aural work, performance and exam preparation. Since 2020, Mary has reduced her student intake and now focusses on adult students. Mary also has vast experience as an accompanist. She is deeply passionate about equipping all students with skills that will provide a life-long enjoyment of music.
Mary is one half of Mary and Me; a highly regarded piano duo with Diana Weston formed in 2022. They perform regularly under the Thoroughbass banner in Sydney and the Southern Highlands. In 2024 they perform in Brisbane in a unique collaboration with artist Kerry Holland.
Danielle Grant
Soprano
Danielle Grant graduated with merit from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with a Bachelor of Music in Voice and has a Licentiate from the Australian Music Examinations Board. Her career began with a bang, being chosen as one of only two singers to represent Australia, performing with the World Chorus at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada. She has performed in the chorus of Opera Australia in the inaugural production of Turandot, as well as Aida, and Opera in the Park as part of the Sydney Festival. As a member of Cantillation and the Sydney Philharmonia Motet Choir she has performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, as well as for a number of film projects (Farscape, Salem’s Lot, Like Minds, Happy Feet 2) and recordings for ABC Classics – Silent Night and Praise: the music of inspiration.
Danielle performed for many years as a soloist at weddings and corporate functions along with harpist Marjorie Maydwell as the duo Dolcezze. She also sang for ten years with Sydney’s female baroque vocal ensemble, The Tall Poppeas. Since 2011 she has been a regular guest singer with the ensemble Thoroughbass, directed by harpsichordist Diana Weston. Together they have made an album (Blue Skies, Magpies and Goldfish) out of which came the children’s musical story Magpie Baby which Danielle also narrated. In 2014- 2015 she with Thoroughbass undertook a major retrospective recording project – the music of celebrated Australian composer, Ann Carr-Boyd, originally composed for The Consort of Sydney’s tours for Musica Viva in the 1970s but never recorded. The resulting new work and double CD ‘Flying West’ appears frequently on the playlists of radio stations ABC Classic and Fine Music Sydney.
Tara Hashambuoy
Violinist
Tara Hashambuoy is a Sydney-based teacher and musician. She studied viola at Sydney Conservatorium of Music with teacher Nicole Forsyth, specialising in historical performance practice. Tara plays both violin and viola and has performed with many prestigious ensembles including Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera, Bach Cantata, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Thoroughbass. She has recorded with the latter (Flying West, music by Ann Carr-Boyd), and performed with them on many occasions, the latest being a fun kid’s show The Toybox by Debussy.
Tara greatly values music education for young children and is a classroom music teacher at a local school, as well as a tutor at the Australian Girls’ Choir. As a classroom music teacher, Tara explores the connection between music and other key learning areas with her students. She is particularly interested in the link between History and the arts in education. Music is strongly connected to culture, time and place, and can give students an authentic and deep understanding of history and cultures. For this reason she welcomes the opportunity with Sydney Living Museums and Thoroughbass to explore the music of our history and how it relates to the present.
Lucy Cormack
Cellist
Lucy Cormack has a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at the University of Technology Sydney. She studied cello under Takao Mizushima. In her final years of schooling at MLC, Lucy took part in the making of the well-known film documentary by Bob Connolly and Sophie Raymond, ‘Mrs Carey’s Concert’. Other activities of note have included a tour across India with the Australian electronic string trio Maske in December 2010.
She is a past member of the popular strings/vocal cover band Mimesis. Lucy has performed with Thoroughbass on many occasions, her favourite shows being the opera La Liberazione di Ruggiero, Phaedra, The Toybox and Forgotten Songs.
Lucy has recently taken up a job as co-host of talk-back radio in Dubai.
Angus Ryan
Cellist
Angus Ryan, cellist, poet, lawyer and philosopher has been a continuo player for Thoroughbass since its inception. His cello is by Peter Walmseley (1745), an asset in both early and contemporary music. He studied for ten years with baroque cellist Anthea Cottee and continued his music training as part of his first degree (Arts, Hons) and with involvement with the SBS Youth Orchestra, the Sydney University Orchestra and later, the Southgate Provincial Orchestra in the UK. An eclectic musician, Angus was also cellist and vocalist in the highly successful covers band Mimesis (2008-2012).
Highlights over the last ten years have been his participation in several Ondine Productions shows – Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione de Ruggiero, Hymn to the Sun (Philip Glass’s Akhnaten), and Britten’s Phaedra. He has recorded with Thoroughbass appearing in the CDs Blue Skies, Magpies and Goldfish, Magpie Baby, and in Flying West. Despite a busy career in law, he continues to enjoy participating annually with Thoroughbass, especially in the distinctly unconventional The Toybox in 2019 and recently Forgotten Songs (2020).
Since 2023, Angus has been working as a lawyer in Dubai.
Strings
Shaun Ng is a teacher and performer of instruments of the violin, viola da gamba and lute families. He received his music training in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia, where he studied historical performance and musicology. He also participated in many notable seminars and conferences such as Oberlin Conservatory’s Baroque Performance Institute, the Tafelmusik Baroque Performance Institute and the Lute Society of America Seminar.
As an active freelance performer, he has performed with many of Sydney’s early music ensembles including the Sydney Consort, Marais Project, Consort 8 and Thoroughbass, the latter as a regular member. In addition to running his busy private studio he is a member of the Musica Viva in Schools program touring Australia in 2019. He has made a CD with Diana Weston ‘Bach & Abel’, the music of Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel.
Anna Fraser
Soprano
Anna Fraser has gained a reputation as a versatile soprano specialising in the interpretation of early and contemporary repertoire performing in a myriad of traditional and exploratory programming. Equally at home as a dramatist on stage, Anna is also a strong exponent of music education, expertly demonstrating the versatility and virtuosity of a cappella singing. Anna regularly performs with a number of Australia’s professional ensembles: Pinchgut Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, Ensemble Offspring, Bach Akadamie Australia, Australian Haydn Ensemble, to name a few.
Joanne Arnott
Recorder player
Joanne Arnott is a recorder player, music teacher and conductor based on the NSW Central Coast. With a Masters degree from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and over 20 years’ teaching and performing experience, Jo has performed with groups such as Bel A Capella, Innominata, Consort 8, and Thoroughbass, and has tutored at early music, recorder, band and orchestral workshops throughout Australia.
As a founding member of The Australian Recorder Project, Joanne (along with Dr. Alana Blackburn) has designed and run workshops for recorder players of all ages and levels. The ARP have recorded some works they commissioned for Vivid in 2015 as well as some medieval canons not previously recorded, and The Australian Recorder Project’s first album will be ready for release soon.