Carla Blackwood enjoys a diverse career performing as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician in Australia and internationally.  On historical natural horns Carla is principal horn of the Orchestra of the Antipodes (Pinchgut Opera), the Australian Haydn Ensemble.  On modern horn Carla performs regularly with the Australia Ensemble, Lyrebird Brass, Quercus Trio, the Australian Wind Quintet, ELISION, the Melbourne Chamber Players and is a regular guest principal horn with orchestras around Australia.  Carla regularly collaborates with composers on new compositions for Horn. Since 2018 Carla has been French Horn Lecturer at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne and since 2022 Horn faculty at the Australian National Academy of Music. 

Prior to taking up her current position in Melbourne Carla was Principal Horn of the Tiroler Symphonie Orchester Innsbruck and Professor for Horn at the Tiroler Landeskonservatorium in Austria. During her 13 years living in Europe, Carla performed as guest principal horn with orchestras including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Sinfonie Orchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, Camerata Salzburg, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Swedish Philharmonic Orchestra.  Carla has held contracts in a number of orchestras across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. 

Originally from Bathurst, NSW, Carla has a Masters of Soloist Performance from the Zürich Hochschule der Künste and a Masters in Performance from the Musikakademie der Stadt Basel, as well as a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Her teachers have included Christian Lampert, Horst Ziegler, Hector McDonald and Radovan Vlatkovic on modern horn, and Thomas Mueller and Glen Borling on the natural horn.

In her free time Carla enjoys bushwalking and camping (or hiking, depending on the continent!), yoga, swimming, knitting, and reading, when she is not running after her energetic son!