Annabelle Traves, Award Winning Violinist

Biography

Annabelle Traves is studying a Bachelor of Music Performance with Professor Alice Waten at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.  She began learning the violin with Emin Tagiev and from age ten with Michele Walsh, Head of Strings at the Queensland Conservatorium. At fourteen Annabelle was awarded a scholarship to attend the Rising Stars Program at the Sydney Conservatorium.

Annabelle is a scholarship recipient at the University of Sydney and at The Women’s College, University of Sydney. Annabelle this year received the Dean’s List of Excellence in Academic Performance from the University of Sydney.

Annabelle toured as soloist with the Tagiev Chamber Orchestra at the age of ten and performed with them in the Sydney Opera House, Estonia, Shanghai, Seville and at Carnegie Hall, New York.

She has been a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra, for which she was the youngest member first chosen at age fourteen. This year Annabelle was appointed Concertmaster of the Australian Youth Orchestra.

In her senior year at St Margaret’s Anglican Girl’s School Annabelle toured Europe as soloist and concertmaster of the St Margaret’s Chamber Strings performing in London and Paris.  While on tour she competed in the Llangollen International Music Festival in Wales, a competition which attracts over 4000 international competitors, and was awarded first place. She has also been awarded the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra Prize.

In 2016 Annabelle was invited by Musica Viva Australia to perform for renowned violinist Maxim Vengerov at a public masterclass in Sydney. In 2017, she was selected to attend the Estivo European Chamber Music Summer School held at the Conservatorio E.F Dall’Abaco in Verona, Italy where she performed and studied under internationally renowned professor’s Eberhard Feltz, Johannes Meissl, Wayne Foster-Smith and Niklas Schmidt.

This year Annabelle performed as part of the UKARIA 24 festival in South Australia, where she collaborated with musicians such as Vilde Frang, Lawrence Power and Nicolas Altstaedt. Annabelle also this year performed in the Melbourne Recital Centre as part of a public masterclass with German violin virtuoso Miss Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Annabelle this year received the Henderson Traveller’s Scholarship from the University of Sydney for her quartet, which includes mentoring programs in Europe and performance opportunities in Paris at the commencement of 2019. Annabelle will be mentored by professors Niklas Schmidt, Oliver Wille and Gunter Pichler, former Concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic and first violinist of the Alban Berg Quartet.

Annabelle has been privileged to perform for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Queensland Law Society, the Vice Chancellor’s Dinner and the Katrina Dawson Foundation Dinner at the University of Sydney, and by the President of the Queensland Club at a dinner with guest speaker Walter Sofronoff QC, President of the Queensland Court of Appeal, for which she received a standing ovation. Annabelle has also enjoyed performing on television, as a semi-finalist for Australia’s Got Talent, The Voice, X Factor, and on tour, accompanying Delta Goodrem, Bruce Springsteen and most recently Michael Buble.

Annabelle plays on a Gagliano violin made in 1784.

October 2018