Meeting Miriam with Celia Craig

Join Celia Craig as she presents a lecture on her 2024 Creative Arts Fellowship research on the early life of teenage musical virtuoso and synesthete (seeing colour when playing music) Dr Miriam Hyde.

Entry is free to this event but bookings are essential.

The talk will be available to view live online via the Library's Facebook and YouTube pages. You do not need to book a ticket to watch the event online.

Celia Craig is a 2024 Creative Arts Fellow, supported by the Friends of the National Library.

About Celia Craig's Fellowship research

As a fellow synesthete and musician, Celia feels deeply connected to Miriam’s story and life. Investigating unpublished manuscripts and letters, Celia will use her own lively words to tell the remarkable story of the young woman who sailed halfway across the globe from Australia’s oldest music institution in South Australia on a major scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. 

This research aims to restore Miriam Hyde in public sight from an elderly lady who wrote much loved ‘easy’ exam piano music in Sydney, to the synesthetic virtuoso, visionary student from Adelaide who took London by storm. Celia’s Fellowship will also research manuscripts of arrangements that Hyde dedicated to a mysterious 'Cecelian Trio', for later performance with Craig’s own 'Trio Tarrawatta', whose pianist, Michael Ierace, retraced Miriam’s exact path as an Elder Overseas Scholar almost a century later. 

About Celia Craig

An Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London since 1997, awarded Exhibitions, Craxton Chamber Music Prize, Advanced and Licentiate Diploma by the UK’s oldest Music Conservatoire, Celia Craig is a neurodiverse classical artist with synesthesia (seeing colour when playing music).

Trained by renowned Hungarian educator, Bela de Csillery (pupil of Kodaly and Hindemith), Celia was personally invited by London Symphony Orchestra to Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo for tuition with Leonard Bernstein. She enjoyed a 30 year elite orchestral career, touring on five continents and inspiring Master of The Kings Music, Judith Weir CBE, to write her first Oboe Concerto. Resident Artist for National Trust of South Australia, Celia now produces chamber concerts in exquisite venues. She is a Business SA Encore Entrepreneur and founded independent record label Artaria in 2017. Her debut synesthesia-inspired classical video production was broadcast on SBS and at Palace Nova Eastend cinema.

Celia is a visiting Lecturer in Oboe at the Australian National University in Canberra. Her primary education program for Musica Viva in Schools, Colours of Home with electric guitarist Caspar Hawksley, explores emotions through improvisation and tours to primary schools nationally. Colours of Home is inspired by her lifetime experience of chromesthesia (involuntary mixing of colour and sound) and has helped identify other young synesthetes.

About National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellowships

The National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellowship program offers writers and artists an opportunity to undertake a 4-week residency at the Library. This program is supported by generous donors and bequests.

Image credit: Miriam Hyde, 1939, courtesy Wirrapang publishers.