Australian recorder player Alana Blackburn is highly regarded throughout Australia and Europe as a soloist and ensemble musician.  With a passion for both early and contemporary music, recorder player Alana Blackburn performs music spanning over 500 years; often finding ways to incorporate medieval, renaissance and baroque repertoire and modern composition either through juxtaposition and/or assimilation within a work or program. Using multiple instruments to discover an enhanced sound-world, Alana pushes the confines of traditional recorder playing, bringing together early historical performance practice and contemporary performance delivery through solo performances, collaborating with other artists, commissioning new works, interdisciplinary performance and electro-acoustic presentations. 

Alana has performed with a number of ensembles including The Australian Recorder Project, The Royal Wind Music, The New Dutch Academy, Salut! Baroque, The Bell Shakespeare Company, Pinchgut Opera, The Sydney Consort, ThoroughBass, The Tall Poppeas and The Sydneian Bach Choir.  As a soloist, she has performed concerti with The Early Music Ensemble of the Sydney Conservatorium, The Manly-Warringah Symphony Orchestra, Coro Innominata and The Bourbaki Ensemble. She has also performed live in Radio broadcasts throughout Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria and The Netherlands.

After completing a Bachelor of Music (performance) degree with First Class Honours at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2004, Alana was awarded a University of Sydney Postgraduate Award to continue with a Master of Music (performance) degree specialising in contemporary Japanese compositions for recorder under the instruction of Hans-Dieter Michatz. With the help of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and PPCA Performers’ Trust, Alana graduated from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in December 2010 under Paul Leenhouts and Jorge Isaac. Along with numerous scholarships for her professional study in performance, Alana was a winner of the Don Cowell Memorial Trust open Recorder Competition in 2011.

 

While in The Netherlands, Alana was a member of The Royal Wind Music – a double sextet of renaissance recorders that specialise in instrumental music from 1500-1640. With this ensemble, she has toured Europe and participated in numerous music festivals and recorded three CDs; ‘El Canto Figurado’, 'Angeli, Zingare e Pastori' and 'En Er Mundo - Encores!'A performer of both early and contemporary music, Alana has performed in some of the world's finest recital halls including the Sydney Opera House (Australia), Wigmore Hall (UK), Amsterdam Concertgebouw (The Netherlands) and Konzerthaus Berlin (Germany). Performances include solo contemporary programs with sound technologist Benjamin Carey, improvisations with the Ethernet Orchestra, a solo artist in the New Music Network’s Mini Series, as well as commissioning a number of works as part of the Australian Recorder Project that were performed in the Sydney Vivid festival.