With a repertoire ranging from Early Music to works composed especially for her, most notably Elena Kats-Chernin’s “Night and Now” Concerto, performer, academic and music educator Dr Sally Walker has toured internationally with the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras, was Principal Flute of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss and the Omega Ensemble, and has performed as Guest Principal Flute with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Kammerakademie Potsdam. She has performed on historical instruments with Salut! Baroque and the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and has a long-standing association as Guest Principal Flautist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with whom she has played modern, baroque and classical flutes, recorders and piccolo.
Born in Canberra, Sally has performed in the Salzburg, Lucerne, Tanglewood, Prague Spring and all major Australian music festivals, and the BBC Proms. She was prize-winner in numerous competitions, including the Friedrich Kuhlau International Flute competition (Germany), and has been nominated for an APRA-AMCOS Award for both for Arts Excellence and Outstanding Contribution by an Individual.
She regularly collaborates with pianist Simon Tedeschi and harpist Emily Granger, with whom she recorded the album “Something Like This” (AVIE Records UK) which received great critical acclaim and was ABC Classic’s ‘Album of the week’. In August 2024, AVIE Records released their second album of Sally’s performances with “Boccherini: Chamber Works for Flute”, recorded with some of Adelaide’s finest musicians, which received a 5-star review from BBC Music Magazine.
Sally is Senior Lecturer in Performance at the Australian National University, Teaching Fellow at the Australian National Academy of Music and contributes to socially driven projects including 1:1 CONCERTS, the Illumina Festival Equal Music program, and is the Ambassador for the Symphony for Life Foundation. In 2025, Sally is Canberra Symphony Orchestra’s Artist-in-Focus.
Photo credit:
Portrait of Sally – Rohan Thomson
Photo of dolphins – Grant Stevens
Graphic design – Cole Bennetts