Myfanwy Hunter

My journey as a musician has been shaped by a deep curiosity for sound, expression, and collaboration. Music began for me at birth—growing up in my mother’s home-based piano school, Children of Note, and surrounded by her Early Music collaborators in their Lyrebird Ensemble. I began classical violin at age six and was eventually drawn to the deeper resonance of the viola in my teenage years. Around this time, I turned away from Western Classical Art Music, turning instead to artists like John Cale (Velvet Underground) and Laurie Anderson, who expanded my sense of what string instruments could express.

My curiosity about diverse bowed string traditions led me to study the esraj from India, to explore Turkish violin techniques, and to immerse myself in Celtic music. But alongside these studies, a question emerged that still drives my practice: what is my music from this place?

That question led me to compose with fellow Australian musicians and to explore experimental, contemporary, and improvised sound worlds. Much of my work unfolds in collaboration—with dancers, theatre makers, and visual artists—where I find fertile ground in the intersection of gesture, resonance, and relational listening.

Alongside my string practice, voice is an integral part of how I create and perform. I experience the voice as both instrument and thread—connecting breath, body, and story. I’m drawn to its capacity for presence and vulnerability, and the way it allows stories to be shared through both words and sound.

In recent years, I’ve come full circle, reconnecting with my musical roots in Baroque and Early Music through the viola da gamba—an instrument whose timbre and lineage feel like home. My approach to music is always seeking: seeking to listen, to respond, and to use sound as a transformative, connective force.