Diana Weston
Ensemble Director
Harpsichordist
Diana Weston biog 2025
Diana has pursued two careers, initially in Medicine (MB.BS., FRACGP) which she practised as a GP, before undertaking a degree in music (MMus, Performance Research). She is a harpsichordist, square pianist and founder of the early music ensemble Thoroughbass. As director of Thoroughbass Diana has initiated many projects – both purely musical and inter-disciplinary – some quite unique. She arranges, produces, performs, researches and writes for her concert programs with Thoroughbass. In addition, and to put harpsichords squarely in the present day, she has commissioned multiple new works and produced over a dozen compact discs. Diana’s recordings for the Australian label Wirripang are frequently aired on radio stations. Some of the more notable of her projects include Cock Crow (with poetry), Debussy’s The Toybox (ballet/puppetry), Glass’ opera Akhnaten (with scent), F. Caccini’s opera Alcina (as Ondine Productions), Dog Tales (children’s stories) and most recently, Painting Music (with painter). Currently, her main area of interest is research and recording music for square piano. This has evolved into a collaboration with composer Diana Blom to write a mini-opera about one of Australia’s most notable colonial women.
Mary Sambell
Mary & Me
Sharing her love of music has always been a priority for Mary Sambell.
After graduating from the University of Western Australia with an Arts and Education degree, Mary taught Highschool classroom music in NSW for 5 years. As highly successful ‘Mary’s Piano Studio’ Mary offered individual piano tuition, HSC coaching, exam and concert preparation, accompaniment and theory studies. Throughout her music career, and whatever a student’s ability and capability, Mary’s aim was to nurture a connection and love for music that would be lifelong.
In 2022, Mary shifted her focus to performing. Diana Weston, director of the music ensemble Thoroughbass, invited her to become one half of the piano duo Mary&Me. Regular concerts are held in Sydney, regional NSW and interstate. Programs include Classical, Contemporary, commissioned works, children’s Suites and premieres. The duo often collaborates with other instrumentalists and singers, and in 2025 performed alongside Brisbane artist Kerry Holland. Mary&Me has made several recordings of the piano duets of Australian composers Ann Carr-Boyd and Diana Blom, published by the Australian label Wirripang. Mary also sings with the Sydney Philharmonic Choirs.
Together with music, Mary enjoys her grandchildren, nature, reading and walking.
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.
Shaun Ng
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.
Steve Machamer
Percussion
Steven moved permanently from the US to Sydney in 2001. He has worked continuously as a performer and educator since then with some of Sydney’s top institutions including the Sydney Symphony, Australian Opera and Ballet, Sydney University and UNSW. He has frequently collaborated with Diana Weston performing with her group Thoroughbass as well as other chamber ensembles. Prior to this relocation, Steven earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School followed by 21 more years of freelance work in New York City. He performed in all of the major concert halls including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and many Broadway theatres. Working with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York City Ballet, and the original Company of A Chorus Line on Broadway are just a few of the highlights of more than two decades of professional work in New York. International touring with classical and musical productions led to his first visit to Australia in 1992. Steven now lives with his Australian wife of 23 years, cellist Margaret Lindsay-Machamer and their three adult children, Heidi, Carl and Ivan.
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. The Australian Recorder Project’s first album will be ready for release soon.
Hester Wilson
Soprano
Hester graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music with a Graduate Diploma of Vocal Studies and a Graduate Diploma of Opera Studies. She was awarded 1st prize in Australia’s most prestigious singing competition, the McDonald’s Aria, has been the recipient of a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, the Griffith University Bach Prize, the Elizabeth Muir Prize and the Doris Smith Scholarship. Hester also received a nomination from The City of Newcastle Dramatic Awards for best professional actress for her role as Lucy in the Sound Construction Company’s production of Menotti’s The Telephone.
On the concert platform, Hester has sung the soprano solos for Handel’s Messiah and Solomon, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, St John Passion, Magnificat and Cantata BWV 51, Gounod’s Messe Solennelle, Handel’s Lucretia Cantata, as well as Vivaldi’s motet Nulla in Mondo Pax Sincera and Villa Lobos’ Brasilieras No 5.
She has freelanced with Opera Australia and has taken part in the operas Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Otello, The Cunning Little Vixen and Der Rosenkavalier. As a member of The Tall Poppeas 2003 – 2013, she performed the role of Passionae in Troppo Amore; premiered the role of Erica in Second Chance in Prometheus Opera’s ‘Sydney in Love Festival’; performed the role of Alcina in Ondine Productions’ La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina’, Britten’s Phaedra, excerpts of Glass’s Akhnaten and, with Thoroughbass – Liquid Days.