Music Futuremakers Lead The Way

Musica Viva Australia is thrilled to announce Madeleine Jevons and Freya Schack-Arnott as its 2025-26 FutureMakers. 

Musica Viva Australia’s FutureMakers program discovers, nurtures and enables brilliant early-career artists to become Australia’s musical leaders of tomorrow. Across two years the participants receive strategic mentoring from leading artists, directors, and creatives across a range of artforms and industries.  

Artistic director Paul Kildea: 

“It is vital that Musica Viva Australia and the industry in general invest in cultural leadership because it’s not something that people learn in their training. You can invest 15 years of your life in learning how to play your instrument but it doesn’t prepare you as an artistic director, or a figure that’s going to effect change in the policy and maintain an artform that we love dearly. We try and identify a figure whom we believe in and who we think will have a lasting impact.”  

Melbourne/Naarm based violinist Madeleine Jevons enjoys a vibrant freelance career which melds her passions for music-making, curation and community. A graduate of the Australian National Academy of Music, she plays regularly in orchestras including Orchestra Victoria, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian World Orchestra.  

Madeleine is a current and founding member of the Penny Quartet, an award-winning ensemble which intertwines a commitment to core quartet repertoire with exploring less charted territory. Projects range from recording Paul Kelly's ARIA award winning “Conversations With Ghosts” to collaborations with Zola Jesus and Flight Facilities, recording the work of jazz pianist Tim Stevens and touring with artists such as Kate Miller-Heidke and Thndo. 

FutureMakers is going to fit into a place which I hadn’t scoped out before,” says Madeleine, “which is really exciting. I’ve never operated as a solo artist; I’m very much a collaborator, and already it’s offered me the opportunity to think outside of what I’d thought possible.”

Freya Schack-Arnott is a contemporary cellist and nyckelharpist who enjoys a multi-faceted career as a performer, improviser, composer and curator, ranging across contemporary classical repertoire to experimental, electronics, folk and popular art forms. Schack-Arnott regularly performs with Australia’s leading new music ensembles, including ELISION Ensemble (as core member) and Ensemble Offspring. As an improviser and composer, Schack-Arnott’s current projects include: ’Runa Cara’ (Scando/Irish folk duo) and ‘Bonniesongs’ with Bonnie Stewart, ‘FSA/BW’ (experimental string duo with bassist Benjamin Ward) and DK trio ‘Skaft Økse og Sav’. Freya is also co-founder and curator of the regular ‘Opus Now’ music series, an ongoing project exploring relationships between the music of today and classical string quartets.