Schubert Fantasy 

In 2026 I was lucky to do a 12 concert tour performing Schubert Octet with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which was an absolute life highlight.  The first half of concert featured Richard Tognetti's own arrangement of Schubert's Fantasy in C Major, which featured a beautiful horn solo captured in this trailer recorded during the rehearsal process. 

In 2022 Pinchgut Opera put on a concert in Melbourne and Sydney centred around music written for the "Women of Pieta." I performed as first baroque horn soloist – together with Doree Dixon on second horn – in the magical and at times stratospheric Concerto for Two Horns in F Major RV 539 by Vivaldi.  This is a wonderful demonstration of how much I enjoy living on the edge! 

Photo credit: Cassandra Hannagan

In the wake of the devastating 2019-2020 Australian bushfires Elliott Gyger composed Ablaze for me and colleagues, for the unusual combination of horn, oboe, double bass and harp. Ablaze centres on the capabilities of the horn in combination with other instruments. The nine short movements explore various aspects of the crisis, whether environmental, physical, political or emotional, each captured in a one-word title. Quite apart from this being an exceptional composition, it was enormously valuable for me to channel my own emotions about the fires and the politics around them into a substantial and challenging musical work and its performance. It is deeply rewarding to have new musical works written in my own time and a privilege to be allowed to digest and express my response to significant, and emotionally charged events, through my own artistic practice. 

I became fascinated with Don Banks' music when I was living in Innsbruck and first performed his Horn Trio, which I later recorded as part of my album "Australian Horn Trios" with Quercus Trio. 

Performing his horn concerto became a bucket-list item after I became enamoured with his very engaging and playful use of serialism, and his creative but deeply idiomatic approach to writing for the horn.  My fascination grew when I spent time exploring the Don Banks archives in Canberra.  In his letters to Barry Tuckwell and other friends, I encountered a kindred spirit.  His infections enthusiasm at encountering the Dolomites on his first trip to Italy at 23, and his joy at the birds and vegetables in his Canberra garden upon returning to Australia some two decades later were deeply and personally relatable to me, and increased my connection to his music. 

Banks wrote the Concert in 1965 for Barry Tuckwell and the London Symphony Orchestra and received to high critical acclaim, and despite critics expecting it to become a staple of the horn repertoire, it has slipped into obscurity.  I was lucky to perform it in 2022 with the University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. 

I'm delighted to share a little no-budget project from Melbourne's never-ending lockdown, a premiere recording of the amazing Cathy Likhuta's horn solo "Dreams of a Wombat" on a rare visit to work in the lockdown months.

As an ex-expat and lover of the bush, anything about our local flaura and fauna warms my heart, and as a horn player anything by Cathy Likhuta feels me with glee! Wombats have had a unique place in my heart ever since one broke into the tent on an unforgettable camping trip with my two year old - not once but twice! So when I found out that Cathy had written a horn solo about the dreams of a wombat, it became a top priority to play it (and secretly i feel like she wrote it for me, even though she did not know me yet....). And what a wonderful piece! Not only is she a fantastic composer for the horn but she is a wonderful human being and now friend. Special thanks to Joel Brennan for recording and editing this performance. 

Cathy Likhuta's Horn Concerto "Sure Fire" also takes its inspiration from the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires. While I was part of the Consortium who commissioned this work through the generous support of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. While the first and third movements play more on the energy of fire than the specific tragedy of that time, the middle movement "Lament" captures the devastation of those fires in Australia. In the process of rehearsing and the performance, the second movement proved a brilliant vehicle for collaborative lament. I discussed the program with the University of Melbourne Wind Symphony and explained to them how to use this movement to express their own anguish, sighing, and the tragedy the fires were for us through the specific motifs and structure of the movement. The performance was particularly moving and evocative, and I am sure this is in no small part to my plea to the students to use it to express their personal experiences of this tragedy. It was a collective lament in the best possible way.

With Lyrebird Brass we recorded an album of relatively unknown brass trios uncovered by my colleague Don Immel on a research trip to Belgium.  One of our favourites of these was this trio by Belgian Composer Lucie Vellerie, which we recorded and released to mark International Women's Day (note my purple stockings) in 2022. 

Born and educated in Brussels, Lucie Vellère (1896 – 1966) was best known during her lifetime for her vocal works which earned her the international prize of the “National Council of Women of the U.S.A” and the "Prix du Brabant." One of her final compositions, “Deux Essais” (1965) is a beautifully lyrical brass trio that exploits the versatility of the three instruments, moving from warm, velvety textures in the first movement to frenetic, bouncy passages in the second. 

In 2023 composer Melody Eötvös won the Continuo Community Commission Circle grant to write a substantial new horn trio for Quercus Trio.  Melody and I had already bonded over our shared love for nature and trees, and she took this as inspiration for the trio.   Shivelight takes its title from a word first used by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who coined the term to describe the shafts of light that pierce and filter through the foliage and canopies of trees. 

I first encountered Swiss-American composer Daniel Schnyder's exciting music when I was living in Switzerland, and as soon as I realised he had written a horn trio I was determined that Quercus Trio should play it.  The work is incredibly challenging but endlessly rewarding!  A wild ride that is fun for listener and performer alike! We loved the forest connection in the title (Walden means forest in German). Even if it was the American place of Walden that inspired the work, we like to think he is playing with words and also inspired by trees. 

In 2024 I was lucky to perform the famous aria "Va Tacito" from Handel Julius Caesar with Pinchgut Opera, Erin Helyard and Tim Mead for their season at City Recital Hall in Sydney.

Photo credit: Brett Boardman.

"Carla Blackwood played a horn obligato of velvety burnished smoothness, impeccably controlled from the gallery." — Sydney Morning Herald

"Special mention must go to what is probably the most famous aria from Julius Caesar the aria for horn and Caesar, Va tacito e nascosto. This is a work that every principal horn player wants to play and probably they also fear it as it is exposed and on a natural horn it is most temperamental. Well, Carla Blackwood had the day all hornists dream of as she was simply magnificent and the duetting with Tim Mead captivated everyone."

— Classikon

"The cadenza created by Mead with the brilliant horn playing of Carla Blackwood in the cat-and-mouse aria Va tacito (cleverly presented as a game of chess) is sheer joy."

— Limelight

“Va tacito,” also featured a remarkably virtuosic solo horn accompagnato (no other Händel opera has a horn solo), with the soloist being even more eloquent in the da capo section’s almost obligatory ornamentations than the voice."

— Opera Wire