Aura Go
Virtuoso Piano Soloist
“Her recent recital as part of the Sydney Opera House’s Crescendo series quickly demonstrated her potential and worth as an artist to foster innovative musical exchange in the decades ahead […] Bold and inspiring … innate storytelling.”
Sydney Arts Guide, October 2018.
Image © Anne Moffat
Aura Go is an Australian pianist whose curiosity, versatility and diverse musical interests have taken her across the globe, working in many different roles and contexts. She has been the soloist in concertos ranging from Bach to Gubaidulina with orchestras in Australia, the USA and Finland, is a passionate collaborator and advocate for new and underrepresented music, and brings her imagination and adventurous spirit to older music with a special love for Mozart and Beethoven.
Aura has performed as soloist and chamber musician at international music festivals such as the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Metropolis New Music Festival (Melbourne), Australian Festival of Chamber Music (Townsville), Huntington Estate Music Festival (NSW), Musica Viva Music Festival (Sydney), Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (Finland), Rauma Festivo (Finland), Kauniainen Musiikkijuhlat (Finland), Heinäveden Musiikkipäivät (Finland), PianoEspoo Festival (Finland) and the Bari International Music Festival (Italy).
She has been a guest artist presenting concerts and lectures at the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas (USA) the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus (Denmark) and the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz (Poland).
Collaboration is a central part of Aura’s musical life. She enjoys a longstanding musical partnership with Japanese pianist Tomoe Kawabata as the KIAZMA Piano Duo. KIAZMA has presented popular concert series at the Melbourne Recital Centre since 2016, a regional tour in 2018 and has undertaken ambitious projects such as a complete performance of J.S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue. With a strong interest and commitment to uncovering neglected gems from the piano duo repertory, KIAZMA has released its first CD ‘Five Rocks in a Japanese Garden’, featuring first recordings of works by five Japanese composers.
In Finland, Aura enjoys a regular musical partnership with mezzo-soprano Erica Back. A shared interest in story-telling and expanding the scope of the classical music concert has seen the pair create and perform dramatized recitals such as A Room of One’s Own, a semi-staged performance of women’s song that draws on the real-life friendship between Virginia Woolf and Ethel Smythe. Aura is currently developing a new cross-disciplinary work with Tomoe Kawabata, choreographer/dancer Kristina Chan and director/designer Clare Britton.
A champion of Australian music, Aura has performed works of Liza Lim, Miriama Young, Elena Kats-Chernin, Katy Abbott, Kate Neal, Andrew Ford, Ian Munro, Larry Sitsky, Roger Smalley, Carl Vine, Ross Edwards, Connor D’Netto, Julian Yu, Gordon Kerry, Helen Gifford and James Rushford among others. In Finland, Aura became a sought-after performer of Finnish works. She made numerous recordings for the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, performed the neglected A. Merikanto Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Tapiola Sinfonietta in 2017, and performed concerts across the Nordic region with works of Rautavaara, Salonen, Lindberg, Saariaho, Myllärinen, Sallinen, Raitio, Sibelius, Kuulla, Melartin, Madetoja among others.
Aura completed her early musical studies in Melbourne, studying at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Australian National Academy of Music under the guidance of Max Cooke and Ian Munro. She then received a scholarship to the Yale School of Music, where she completed her Master of Music. From 2011-2018 Aura was based in Helsinki and is a doctoral candidate at the Sibelius Academy. Her artistic research addresses the aspect of creativity in classical music performance, drawing on the psycho-physical approach of actor Michael Chekhov and exploring ways in which musicians can achieve a more open, spontaneous creative state when practising and performing. She has received artistic guidance in Finland from Erik T. Tawaststjerna. Aura’s overseas studies have been generously supported by the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, the Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship, the Wihuri Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. In 2018-19 Aura was a Musica Viva FutureMakers Artist.
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