Bonnie Smart has performed both as a soloist and chamber musician in various venues around Australia. Her playing has been televised on Channel 7’s Good Friday Appeal, and broadcast on ABC FM and 3MBS FM. She also performs as a casual player with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and during 2004 Bonnie was invited to perform as Guest Principal Cello with the Canberra Symphony. She has appeared alongside David Pereira in the Sydney Festival’s Twilight Chamber Music Series, and has recorded with Pereira and Ian Munro on the Tall Poppies label.
Bonnie immensely enjoys teaching the cello, and has taught in various schools around Melbourne. She has been working for the last two years at Meadows Primary with Dani Arcaro, teaching students through the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Pizzicato Effect. More information can be seen on the MSOrchestra Youtube channel.
Bonnie was Director of Studies in Music at Trinity College from 2008 - 2010. She has tutored at The University of Melbourne in subjects concerning Australian music history, and in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western music. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University; her research project entails examining the life, music and performance practices of the English cellist Robert Lindley (1776-1855). She gave her first paper at an international conference in July 2009 at the Seventh Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music in Britain, traveling as a recipient of a Melbourne Abroad Travelling Scholarship from the University of Melbourne. Her second paper at an international conference was given the following year, at the conference on Music for Stringed Instruments: Music archives and the Materials of Musicological Research in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries at Cardiff University.
Bonnie was a scholarship holder in the Australian National Academy of Music’s inaugural Advanced Performance Program, during which time she began lessons with David Pereira. Prior to this, Bonnie studied with Phillip Green. As a recipient of a scholarship from the Foundation for Young Australians and an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant, Bonnie has attended the International Holland Music Sessions. She has also been awarded the AE Floyd Memorial Scholarship at the University of Melbourne, where she completed a Master of Music in Performance under the guidance of Nelson Cooke.
Bonnie also enjoys food a lot, and if you do too, you might like to have a look at her angmotaisek blog.