Anna Grinberg, Doretta Balkizas and Patrick Murphy

Anna Grinberg

Dr Anna Grinberg is Piano Performance Fellow and Lecturer at the School of Music, University of Queensland. She has an international profile as a pianist, teacher, and academic, and collaborates widely with orchestras, composers and other performers.

Anna’s engagements have included solo and chamber music performances at prestigious venues in the United States, including Royce Hall in Los Angeles and New York's Weil Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and in Europe, Israel and China. She has performed as soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the Paul Mellon Chamber Orchestra.

She performs as a member of the Viney-Grinberg Duo, ensemble-in-residence at the University of Queensland, exploring both existing and new repertoire. Through the duo she has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for piano duo from composers in Australia and the United States, with funding from sources such as the Australia Council for the Arts, and the Fromm Foundation, Harvard. This work has been featured on three compact disc releases by ABC Classics and Tall Poppies, and has been nominated for an Australian Music Centre/APRA Award for Excellence.

After completing postgraduate studies at Yale University (with Boris Berman) and SUNY Stony Brook (with Gil Kalish), Anna served on the piano faculties of Chapman University and California Institute of the Arts prior to her current position at the University of Queensland.

In 2020 Dr Grinberg released a recording on Naxos that consisted of commissioned new works for two pianos.

Doretta Balkizas

Based in Germany since 2015, Australian violinist Doretta Balkizas returns to Australia in July 2024 as the newly appointed Lecturer in Violin at The University of Queensland School of Music. She leads a varied life as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and in recent seasons, has performed, recorded and toured in various ensembles, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Bremer Philharmoniker and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, appearing in concert throughout Europe, Asia and Australia.

Doretta has performed as a concerto soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and Nanning Symphony Orchestra (China), and was a finalist in several major Australian competitions, including the 2015 Symphony Australia Young Performer Award and the Dorcas McClean Travelling Scholarship for Violinists, where she was a major prize-winner and received the inaugural Fritz Kreisler Prize.

As a chamber musician, Doretta has appeared at the International Holland Music Sessions, the Musica Viva Festival, Coriole Music Festival, Mackay Chamber Music Festival and the Yellow Barn Music Festival, where she collaborated with Roger Tapping (Juilliard String Quartet) and Donald Weilerstein.

In 2018, Doretta received her Master of Music with distinction from the Hochschule für Musik “HannsEisler”, Berlin, having previously completed an undergraduate degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as a student of Alice Waten.

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.