Julia Fredersdorff: Artistic Director & Baroque violin, vocals
Emily Sheppard: violin, viola, eelhu, vocals
Rachel Meyers: viola, viola, vocals
Katie Yap: viola, vocals

Sirens by Van Diemen’s Fiddles
Lighting Design: Matthew Marshall
Dramaturgical Advice: Lindy Hume
Audio Production: Luke Plumb
Daphne Myth Text:
Narration: Isabel Howard & Emily Sheppard
Producer: Jennifer Kerr
Operations Manager: Dirk Lorenzen

Works by Rachel Meyers and Emily Sheppard were assisted by a King Island Council Artist Residency.

Emily Sheppard Descent into sirens was created with support from APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund.

Sirens was supported by a creative development residency at Four Winds.

Julia Fredersdorff 

Melbourne-born violinist Julia Fredersdorff studied baroque violin with Lucinda Moon at the Victorian College of the Arts, before travelling to the Netherlands to study with Enrico Gatti at The Royal Conservatorium in The Hague. Based in Paris for close to a decade, Julia freelanced with some of the finest European ensembles, such as Les Talens Lyriques, Les Folies Françoises, Le Concert d’Astrée, Le Parlement de Musique, Ensemble Matheus, Les Paladins, Il Complesso Barocco, New Dutch Academy, Ensemble Aurora and Bach Concentus.

Now resident again in Australia, Julia is the founder and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian baroque ensemble, Van Diemen’s Band. She is a founding member of the chamber ensemble Ironwood, the twice ARIA-nominated baroque trio Latitude 37, and founder and former Artistic Director of the annual Peninsula Summer Music Festival on the Mornington Peninsula. Julia has appeared in major arts festivals around Australia and New Zealand and has toured extensively across Europe, from Reykjavík to Wroclaw, Madeira to Venice.

Julia has participated in nearly forty international recordings for the labels BIS, Virgin Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Accent, Accord, Naïve, Erato, Passacaille, Ambronay, ABC Classic, Vexations840 and Tall Poppies.

Emily Sheppard

Emily Sheppard is a composer, performer and scientist based in Tasmania. She dwells in the uncharted territory between realms often considered opposites: classical and folk, improvisation and notation, art and science. Greatly inspired by the enduring mysteries of nature, she aims to bring a little more wonder to the world.

Her composition ‘Aftermath’ for singing violist in scordatura has been championed by Katie Yap, who won the prestigious Freedman Fellowship performing it. In 2021, she received an ABC Classic Commission, composing and recording a cross-genre suite of music in collaboration with Claire Anne Taylor. The resulting album was released in 2023.

Van Diemen’s Fiddles has commissioned Emily to write several compositions and arrangements for performances as part of Ten Days on the Island (2021), MONA FOMA (2021) and the Australian Wooden Boat Festival (2022). Emily’s music has also been performed by Michael Kieran Harvey, Anne Norman, Quin Thomson, and the Tasmanian Conservatorium Choir. Emily is a core member and composer for Where Water Meets (alongside Yyan Ng), a chamber-folk ensemble that has played at every major festival in Tasmania, at the National Folk Festival, and toured to New Zealand in 2023.

Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in geography and an honours degree in marine science, specialising in seaweed. Over the past decade, she has communicated science through music, creating shows about CRISPR gene engineering, endangered kelp forests, the geological deep time history of Tasmania, and most recently the incredible migration story of freshwater eels.

Rachel Meyers

Tasmanian musician, composer and musicologist Rachel Meyers’ career spans world, folk, experimental, and early music spheres, and has developed within the fields of performance, academia, community cultural development and music education. She completed a Bachelor of Music at the University of Melbourne, and studied violin under the tutelage of Leonid Zeyde, and music composition with Dr Stuart Greenbaum.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Rachel has recorded several albums and toured nationally with outfits including Van Diemen’s Fiddles and The Tinderbox Collective; and internationally with chamber-folk duo Meyers & McNamara. She has composed, arranged, and collaborated on original music and sound art for her various ensembles for over 10 years, and received two private commissions in 2023. Her compositions have been played at Next Wave Festival, Mona Foma, and private events.

Rachel is currently undertaking a PhD in ecological experimental music and sound art and her work Submergence|y was recently performed by the Melbourne Symphony as part of the 2025 Cybec Showcase.

She is deeply passionate about working with stories of place, identity, and personal connection, and using art as a tool for real, tangible community change.

Katie Yap 

Modern and baroque violist Katie Yap plays regularly with Australia’s finest ensembles including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Van Diemen’s Band, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and has joined groups like the Academy of Ancient Music overseas. Her greatest love is chamber music, and she is a founding member of prog-baroque quartet Croissants & Whiskey, the Chrysalis Harp Trio, and crossover folk/baroque group Wattleseed Ensemble.

Katie is fascinated by music’s ability to tell stories and bring people together. As the 2022 Freedman Fellow, her project Multitudes explored the nexus of folk, baroque, and new music styles, and a life-long fascination with improvisation. She will create four new works through collaborative composition with partners in crime Emily Sheppard (fiddle/voice), Donald Nicolson (harpsichord/electronics), Bowerbird Collective (violin and cello), and Mindy Meng Wang (guzheng), exploring themes of cultural identity, environmental storytelling and activism, and the physical joy of music-making.

Katie has become known for her curation and project management, exploring this side of her career through her role as Artistic Director of the 3MBS women-in-music festival, Music, She Wrote and Wattleseed Ensemble. She is also a passionate educator, having taught viola at the University of Queensland and Monash University, and she has an intractable habit of stress-baking, which can make for delicious rehearsal breaks!

Karina Schmitz (replacing Julia for the Nipaluna/Hobart performance)

American violinist and violist, Karina Schmitz, came to Australia in 2019 and relocated to Nipaluna/Hobart in early 2025. She is thrilled to find herself immersed in the rich and vibrant musical scene in her new home. In addition to Van Diemen’s Band, she also appears as principal violist with the Australian Haydn Ensemble and in nineteenth-century period trio Notturno. She has performed with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, Salut! Baroque, and Ensemble Galante.

In the United States, Karina was principal violist of Handel & Haydn Society in Boston, principal violist of Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland, principal violist of the Carmel Bach Festival in California, and founding violinist/violist with New York based 17th century ensemble ACRONYM. Karina holds viola performance degrees from New England Conservatory of Music (Boston) and the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Karina plays on a copy of a Brothers Mantegazza viola she commissioned from Canadian maker, Francis Beaulieu, in 2011.

Matthew Marshall

Born and raised in Perth Western Australia, Matthew Marshall is a graduate of the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) Production & Design course in 2000.

With 25 years of experience Matt has worked for most of the major performing arts companies and festivals in Australia including multiple shows for Adelaide Festival, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Bell Shakespeare, Belvoir, Black Swan State Theatre Company, Brisbane Festival, City of Sydney, Crown Casino Melbourne & Perth, Dark Mofo, Darwin Festival, Ensemble Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Melbourne Festival, Musica Viva Australia, Sydney Dance Company, Sydney Festival, Sydney Mardi Gras, Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Opera House, Marrugeku, Opera Australia, Opera Queensland, Perth Festival, Pinchgut Opera, State Opera of South Australia, Victorian Opera, West Australian Ballet, West Australian Opera & WOMADelaide.

Matt’s work has been seen on the international stage at Kampnagel Festival, Oper Leipzig & Festpiele Ludwigshafen in Germany. Barbican, Roundhouse & Southbank Centre in London. The Famous Spiegeltent & Magic Mirrors at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. In Europe dances pieces LE DERNIER APPEL & GUDIRR GUDIRR (Marrugeku) at Le Manège & L’Espal -Scène Nationale in France, Concertgebouw Belgium, Teatro Central Seville, Spain & the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea, New Caledonia.

Matt has been nominated for his work twice by The Helpmann Awards for Best Lighting Design (2012, 2017) and has received multiple nominations for Best Lighting Design from the Australian Production Design Guild.

Recent designs include Dido & Aeneas (Opera Queensland/Opera Australia), Winterreise (Musica Viva), Dark Mofo Night Mass (DarkLab), Tim Minchin’s The Absence of You video and Athalia (Pinchgut Opera). Matt’s opera production of Cinderella (Opera Queensland) with long time collaborator Lindy Hume has played around the world including Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and the USA. It performs in repertory at Oper Leipzig since 2016.

Upcoming designs include THE FAIRY QUEEN (Pinchgut Opera), 4 SEASONS (Queensland Ballet) and a new world premiere at the Finnish National Opera based on the novel by Karl Ove Knausgård. MORGONSTJÄRNAN – THE MORNING STAR.

Matt is also the lighting designer for PARRTJIMA FESTIVAL OF LIGHT 2025 in Alice Springs (Mparntwe).

Lindy Hume
Lindy Hume is one of Australia’s leading directors, acknowledged internationally for fresh interpretations of a wide variety of repertoire and progressive artistic leadership of Australian arts organisations and festivals including Perth Festival, Sydney Festival, and more recently Four Winds Festival and Ten Days on the Island. Hume’s twelve Australian international festivals leave a substantial legacy of stellar global creations, bold and diverse new Australian works, projects fore-fronting contemporary First Nation cultures, socially engaged practice and deep community connections across Australia.

Equally at home in opera, Lindy Hume has served as Artistic Director of four Australian opera companies: West Australian Opera, Victorian Opera, OzOpera and Opera Queensland. She was the interim Creative Director and Artistic Adviser for Opera Australia’s Sydney Summer Season 2024.

As a stage director, she regularly creates new productions in Australia, NZ, Europe, US and the UK for renowned international companies such as Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Des Moines Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Royal Swedish Opera Stockholm, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Aldeburgh Festival, Welsh National Opera and eight productions for New Zealand Opera. In Australia she has created 100+ small-to-large-scale productions, several new Australian works, and won Helpmann Awards for best director and best production. In her many productions for Opera Australia and the state companies as well as four Pinchgut Opera productions, she is recognised for creating popular and audience-friendly stagings that are intelligent yet accessible, boldly theatrical and oriented toward feminist / humanist narratives.

*World Premiere

Rachel Meyers (b.1981) Diurnality (2024)

Marco Uccellini (1603-1680) Questa Bella Sirena from Sonate, correnti et arie Op.4 (1645)

Kerry Andrew (b.1978) arr. VDF and Donald Nicolson (2025) Blue Men (2023)

Emily Sheppard (b.1993) Descent into sirens* (2025)

Katie Yap (b.1990) & Yyan Ng (b.1985) Kairai* (2025)

Quin Thomson (b.1974) Perceived / Real* (2025)

R. Meyers (b.1981) Ginosko* (2025)

Fredrik Sjölin (b.1982) Shore (2017)

Trad. arr. R. Meyers (2025) Land on the Shore

KERRY ANDREW Blue Men (2023)
Lyrics: Robert Macfarlane

Storm takes form
Blue sea beats
Beats its fists
Fast on hull
Hard on hope
Hurls its ropes
Snares the boats
Hauls the hearts
To the deeps

O you must, O you must 
Give a gift to us
A kist not of rust or dust
But of bright silver verse
Or we will pull you down
O we will pull you down
So you must, O you must
Sing our song’s next line
But we set the meter
We set the rhyme
And if you spoil our song,
Falter, utter wrong,

Then it is drowning time,

O it is drowning time.
So here is our song,
Now continue it on:

Have you danced in the mask of the deer?
Can you speak with the voice of the tides?
Will you swim through the blue without fear?

QUIN THOMSON Perceived / Real (2025)

1. city | the perceived 

Ill
Ill-mannered
Ill-tempered
Ill-fitting
Ill-adapted
Ill at ease

She’s a Dumb smart girl                                                   not a girl
Unattractive, fat                                                                things hurt
Hypochondriac                                                                  things hurt
And she talks too much                                                   it’s they
And she laughs too loud                                                  it’s they
Oversensitive                                                                     things hurt
Can’t she take a joke?                                                       it’s they
She’s a know It All                                                              it’s they
But she lacks self worth                                                   it’s they
Goody two shoes girl                                                        it’s
Abrasive Annoying Unreasonable                                   it’s
Awkward                                                                             it’s
Abrasive Annoying Unreasonable                                   it’s
Awkward                                                                             MY PRONOUNS
Abrasive Annoying Unreasonable
Awkward                                                                             …are they/them
Abrasive Annoying Unreasonable
Awkward

Pronouns
Special snowflake pronouns

unfit
ungainly
uncomfortable
unhinged
unsettling
unacceptable

unacceptable

       2. water | the real

welcome shock

pain
subsides

body calms
mind flows

waves wind currents tide
light shadow mountain

endless change endless now

in this place

unbreaking
belonging

RACHEL MEYERS Ginosko (2025)
ginosko (meaning: know/known; a call to intimacy and experiential knowledge)

kindynos (meaning: danger, peril, nakedness)