Sarah Crane, Patrick Murphy and Alex Raineri

Be swept along on a sea of romance with Soprano Sarah Crane, Cellist Patrick Murphy, Pianist Alex Raineri, and Baritone Shaun Brown. This concert will lead you through the German and Italian Romantic repertoire of composers such as Strauss, and Ponchielli, with some unknown Italian gems as well. This unique collaboration of instruments and musicians is sure to evoke passionate emotions as they explore rich and varied melodic and harmonic soundscapes.

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Sarah Crane

Brisbane soprano Sarah Crane is the winner of several prestigious competitions, including Opera Foundation Australia’s German and Metropolitan Opera Awards. Sarah has worked extensively in Europe with engagements at Cologne Opera, Opéra National du Rhin–Strasbourg, Basel Opera, Freiburg Opera as well as Opera Australia, Opera Queensland, Opera Victoria and South Australian Opera. Operatic repertoire includes Hansel and Gretel, The Rape of Lucretia, Die Zauberflöte, Ariodante, Der Vampyr, Fidelio, Marcello’s Arianna, Carmen, Hyperion, Romeo et Juliette, Le nozze di Figaro, The Merry Widow, The Love of the Nightingale, Rusalka, Alcina, Werther, Orlando and The Perfect American. Concert engagements include Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mozart Requiem, Handel’s Messiah for The Queensland Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Martin’s Maria-Triptychon as well as the Stabat Mater by Szymanowski with the Philharmonic Orchestra Freiburg. Sarah is now a Vocal Lecturer at The University of Queensland where she also lectures in German and French Lyric Diction and Stagecraft. Sarah’s recent performances include Mozart Airborne – a collaboration with Opera Q and Expressions Dance Company, Opera at Jimbour for The Brisbane Music Festival and Opera Queensland, and Handel’s Israel in Egypt with Brisbane Chorale. Sarah will perform Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem with The Brisbane Chorale in November and maintains a busy private teaching studio.

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is Cello Performance Fellow at The University of Queensland School of Music. In 2017 he was appointed cellist of the Tinalley String Quartet that has received critical acclaim for its recent releases of the quartets of Mendelssohn, Debussy and Ravel. 

Patrick has performed extenstively throughout his career as a chamber musician. He was a founding member of the Tankstream Quartet who won first prize in the Melbourne National Chamber Music Competition (2000) and the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan (2001). The Tankstream also won the audience prize and came third place in the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition (2003).

Further study in quartet performance with the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne, Walter Levin (LaSalle Quartet) and Milan Skampa (Smetana Quartet) preceded an invitation from the Australian Government to play at the reception of the Royal Wedding of Crown Prince Frederick and Mary Donaldson in Fredenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Patrick went on to cofound the Whitely trio (now Nexus Piano Quartet), join the Grainger Quartet and later, the Southern Cross Soloists.

Recent concerto performances have included appearances with the Camerata, the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra, The Metropolitan Orchestra (Sydney), and The University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Patrick directs the String Chamber Music Academy at Sound Thinking Australia’s Summer School Music Program in Brisbane and the Winter Chamber Music School at The University of Queensland.

Patrick has performed extensively with the Australian World Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and has premiered new works for solo cello by the Australian composers Paul Dean and James Ledger. In collaboration with colleagues from the UQ School of Music (Associate Professor Adam Chalabi (violin) and Professor Liam Viney (piano)), they have recorded and released a new CD of chamber music composed by Paul Stanhope on ABC Classics. A second album of Tinalley’s recordings of the Mendelssohn Quartets is also due for release in 2020.

Alex Raineri

Described by Limelight Magazine as “a soloist of superb virtuosic skill and musicality”, Australian classical pianist Alex Raineri (b. 1993) is internationally active as recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. International performances include tours throughout California, South-East Asia, United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany and Austria.

Alex has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Radio NZ, California Capital Public Radio, ABC Classic FM and all of the Australian MBS Networks. As a concerto soloist he has featured with the Queensland, Tasmanian, Darwin and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, Southern Cross Soloists, Orchestra Victoria, Four Winds Festival Orchestra, Bangalow Festival Orchestra and the Queensland Pops Orchestra.

Alex has been the recipient of a number of major awards including the Kerikeri International Piano Competition and Australian National Piano Award. Alex is the pianist with the Southern Cross Soloists and other notable chamber partnerships include; Andreas Ottensamer, eighth blackbird, ELISION, Sara Macliver, Natalie Clein, Greta Bradman, Li Wei Qin, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Jack Liebeck, Kathryn Stott, Slava Grigoryan, Brett Dean and many others.

He is the artistic director of the annual Brisbane Music Festival and is a passionate exponent of contemporary music having given 129 world premieres and 89 Australian premiere performances to date. Discography includes; Transfiguration (2019), Inventions (2019), I’ll Walk Beside You – Teddy Tahu Rhodes & Southern Cross Soloists (2018 – ABC Classics) and braneworlds – Kupka’s Piano (2017).