Performer – employee test

The Australian Guitar Duo is becoming recognised as one of the most dynamic and exciting guitar ensembles. The duo has performed throughout the world, including at the New York Guitar Duo Festival in New York City, Project Cancion Española in Spain, Festival de Musique Classique in France, Meadowlark Music Festival in Nebraska, and numerous major cities throughout their native Australia.

Performing a mixture of contemporary Australian compositions and standard works from the guitar duo repertoire, The Australian Guitar Duo consists of Rupert Boyd and Jacob Cordover, respected soloists in their own right. They met and formed as a duo in the year 2000 while undertaking studies at the Australian National University School of Music, where they studied with renowned Australian guitarist Timothy Kain.

The Australian Guitar Duo has been broadcast on radio stations throughout Australia and the United States and was a prize winner of the chamber music division of the Australian Guitar Competition.

Mr. Boyd and Mr. Cordover both play hand-made Australian guitars, and in March 2012 are undertaking a national tour of Australia to release their debut CD Songs from the Forest.

Müge Büyükçelen was born in 1975 in Istanbul, Turkey, where she began playing music at the age of nine. She studied at the Istanbul State Conservatory, where her natural talent was quickly recaognized and she was awarded the “Best Young Musician” Award. She studied privately with Nicolai Chumacenko, Sandra Goldberg, Ayla Erduran, and Burkhard Godhoff.

Müge holds a Masters degree in music performance from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and an Associate Teaching Diploma from the Victoria Conservatory of Music. She has taught and performed at the Toulouse National Conservatory  and is a former member of both the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra and the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra. She has won numerous awards, including first prize at the Violin Competition of the Turkish Cultural Ministry and first prize for the Best Interpreter of Turkish Composers. Over the past several years she has traveled to Stanford University on scholarship to study string quartet repertoire with the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

Ms. Büyükçelen has been a featured soloist with numerous orchestras, performing in France, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, North America, Costa Rica, Oman and Bahrain. In 2006 Müge was a featured soloist with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Martin Fischer-Dieskau, where she performed the Barber concerto for violin. In 2007 she completed concert tours in Turkey with the Emily Carr String Quartet and in eastern Canada and the United States with the Aventa Ensemble. She is currently a violin instructor at the Victoria Conservatory of Music and a member of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, the Aventa Ensemble, the Goolden Trio, and the Galiano Ensemble.

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