_Gabriella Smart]

Gabriella Smart is a leading advocate of new music in Australia, with sustained contribution over 35 years. Gabriella’s excellence has been recognised through major awards including residencies, and prestigious fellowships. Her composition Parasymbiosis was selected in the 2025 Australian Performing Rights Association AMCOS Awards (Electroacoustic: Best Work). In 2020/21 she was the recipient of the Paris Residency from The Australia Council for the Arts, a South Australian Government Creative Fellowship, and an APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence by an Individual in 2019. In 2018, she was awarded a Prelude Composer Residency (Australia) and a UNESCO City of Music residency in Katowice, Poland.

Gabriella has been the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship (2010), national Helpmann Award (2009), and Ruby Award for Best Event in South Australia in 2009. Gabriella holds a PhD in Music from Adelaide University and is an active researcher with publications on new music, curation and Australian musical history. She currently holds a part time position as Senior Research Associate & Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Adelaide University.

An active and engaged composer, Gabriella has been commissioned by the Australian Dance Theatre, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Film Festival, Perth International Festival, ABC Classic and Art Zoyd (France). Working across an array of electronics, acoustic instruments, samples and field recordings, Gabriella employs electronic means to fuse and distil the natural resonance of acoustic instruments. Gabriella also performs and composes on a range of MIDI and synthesiser keyboards, and the Electric Cristal, an instrument created by Dylan Crismani (SA) in 2021. The Electric Cristal is amplified electronically and tuned microtonally, adding to its unique resonance. In 2024, Gabriella premiered her composition Parasymbiosis for Electric Cristal, Bass, percussion and electronics at Music Meeting Festival in The Netherlands, in addition to touring Germany with ABE Ensemble. In May 2026, Gabriella will tour Eastern Europe with her duo Gadakosma, featuring David Kotlowy (AUS/UKR) on microtonal guitar and herself on Electric Cristal.

An internationally recognised pianist specialising in new music, Gabriella has performed extensively in Australia and internationally, premiering over 80 new works for solo piano by Australian and international composers in Australia, Europe and China. Gabriella’s playing has been described as ‘meltingly beautiful’ by The Australian. She has performed widely as a soloist throughout Australia, and internationally, promoting the works of Australian composers. Gabriella has performed in the Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide International Festivals, MONA MOFO, TURA (Perth) and in Europe and China (Forbidden Palace Beijing, Shanghai Conservatory, Lyceum Theatre Shanghai).

Gabriella is Artistic Director of Soundstream New Music (est. 1993). She has close, 50-year family ties to Inarma Choir (Titjikala Community, NT). Since 2015 Gabriella has been conducting music workshops in Community. A passionate educator, Gabriella established the Soundstream Emerging Composers’ Forum in 2012, a nationally recognised Australian Forum supporting emerging composers. With Cat Hope in 2018, she established Summers Night Project, inspired by Anne Summers’ Women’s Manifesto (2017), aiming to grow the gender diversity of composers in music programs in Australia and support and mentor female and non-binary composers.

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