Wilma Smith Joins Flinders Quartet
Flinders Quartet has announced that violinist Nicholas Waters will leave the quartet in November 2019 to pursue other career opportunities. He will be replaced by Wilma Smith.
No stranger to the chamber music community, Wilma was appointed Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 2016. She has established her own chamber music series, Wilma & Friends, based at Scotch College, and performs a great variety of chamber music throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Cellist Zoe Knighton says “Wilma joined the quartet as a guest in 2018 and we loved playing with her, so we are thrilled she
has accepted our invitation. She did say there was only one condition … “I get to play second!”
Zoe also speaks highly of Nick’s contribution to the quartet: “Over the past four years, Nick has devoted himself 150% to FQ. He has brought so much life and vitality to the group and we wish him every success in his future endeavours. We’ll certainly be cheering him on.”
Wilma Smith was born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. She studied in Boston at the New England Conservatory with the legendary Dorothy DeLay and Louis Krasner then was founding first violinist of the Lydian String Quartet, winners of the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music and multiple prizes at the Evian, Banff and Portsmouth International String Quartet Competitions. She was Concertmaster of the Harvard Chamber Orchestra and Handel and Haydn Society and performed regularly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops Orchestra.
Invited to return home to form the New Zealand String Quartet, Wilma was first violinist until she was appointed Concertmaster of the New
Zealand Symphony Orchestra, a position she held for nine years before moving to Melbourne to be Concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2014. Wilma also appears as Guest Concertmaster with Sydney, Adelaide, West Australian, and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras along with Orchestra Victoria and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Flinders Quartet’s 2020 20th anniversary season will be announced October 18th and will feature the final three quartets of Beethoven and a world premiere by lauded composer, Decorah Cheetham AO.
