Percussionist Claire Edwardes on carving her own path in music
6 May 2025.
As one of Australia’s most electrifying percussionists, Claire Edwardes is known for her dynamic performance style and passion for bringing new music to new audiences.
This June, she joins the TSO for Psycho! – a program that weaves together murder ballads, gothic soundscapes and film scores, including the iconic Psycho Suite by Bernard Herrmann.
We spoke with Claire about her unusual career path, her love of theatrical percussion, and why the concerto she’ll perform in Hobart is one of the most emotionally charged works she’s ever played.
Percussionist Claire Edwardes.
In our second 6pm concert for the year on 5 June, Edwardes is once again teaming up with the TSO to perform Iain Grandage’s Dances with Devils – a dramatic work inspired by true colonial-era stories.
It’s a visual as well as aural feast due to Claire’s theatrical performance.
In one movement she wears a an apparatus that is joined to a pulley system that lowers tubular bells in and out of water creating an eerie pitch bend.
‘The stories behind each movement are incredibly vivid,’ Claire says. ‘One involves a woman who drowns her child after being abandoned. The sound of the tubular bells going in and out of water creates this haunting pitch bend – it’s absolutely heartbreaking.’
Other movements are lighter in spirit – including one inspired by the 19th-century gold rush performer Lola Montez and her frenetic ‘spider dance.’
‘It’s very physical, very rhythmic, and there’s a lot of movement between the marimba, temple blocks and drums. The composer asked me to embody the characters through the music which requires me to also become an actor in a way – which can be a real challenge when you’re also playing precisely and following the conductor.’
‘When I was younger, percussion was quite a male dominated space. This concerto is unique as it is telling colonial stories of the female experience and that's no coincidence,' Claire says.
'Iain Grandage, the composer, knew that fast, loud and bombastic was not so much my thing and that character in music as well as nuance and storytelling is my real passion. He created a work that encapsulates all of that – with a bit of fast and loud thrown in for good measure too!' she says.
Claire is Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring, a Sydney-based group dedicated to new music.
Although she began her career in traditional classical training (playing piano from age five), she quickly charted her own course – winning the ABC Young Performers Award in 1999 and going on to study and perform extensively in Europe before returning to Australia seven years later.
‘When I was starting out, it was unusual as a percussionist to not pursue an orchestral career. But I had other ideas – and I was lucky to have early opportunities that gave me the confidence to realise this dream. Where my career has ended up now is not something I ever imagined possible,’ she says.
Claire teaches percussion at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and has even been a guest host on Play School, embracing every opportunity to inspire budding young musicians in her role as mentor to the next generation.
‘My aim is to show emerging instrumentalists that they can shape their own career path with ingenuity and creativity and that with drive and passion, anything is possible.’
See Claire Edwardes with the TSO in Psycho! on 5 June.
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