As a school student Michael Bardon studied cello, oboe and clarinet performing as a member of the Pacific School Games Symphony, NSW Public Schools Symphony and the Sydney Olympic Marching Band. 

Accelerated into university at age 17 he holds degrees from the Musikhochschule Luebeck (Germany), Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz (Germany), University of Newcastle (Australia) and professional orchestral training as an academy graduate of the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany). His principal teachers include Professors Diethelm Jonas, Nick Deutsch and Anthea Scott-Mitchell, and he has received master class and chamber music instruction from international artists including Professors Sabine Meyer, Christiane Edinger, Stefan Schilli, Angela Firkins, Jaques Tys, Jochen Muller-Brinken, Markus Möllenbek and Thomas Brandis.

After basing himself in Germany for almost 7 years he returned to Australia in 2011 having performed as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician in countries including Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Poland, Israel, Korea and Sweden.

Michael was a member of the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra Academy, Neues Kammerorchester Bamberg (now Orchester M18), the wind quintet ‘Pentaphonie’, Sydney Symphony Sinfonia and has performed with orchestras including Oper Frankfurt, Sinfonietta Baltica, Neue Philharmonie Hamburg, Mainzer Kammerorchester and the Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra. He is a recipient of many awards including a prestigious German DAAD prize, a scholarship from the north German Possehl Foundation and a Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now scholarship.
Additionally he held the University of Newcastle William Bowmore Prize for Postgraduate Studies in Cello and was the 2012-14 Young Ambassador for the Manning Winter Festival.

An initial teaching position in Hamburg has led to further appointments at Newington College, the University of Newcastle Conservatorium and the Australian Institute of Music. Michael is an enthusiastic pedagogue, with student success including the Music Captaincy of Newington College, scholarship holders at both the Newcastle Conservatorium and Grammar School, frequent high distinction candidates in AMEB examinations and tertiary graduates of the University of Newcastle and Australian Institute of Music. Michael is also employed as an orchestral mentor by the NSW Department of Education and Training for their productions of Star Struck.

Holding performance master’s degrees in both cello (Newcastle) and oboe (Luebeck), Michael maintains a busy career performing, teaching, researching and administrating. He has performed frequently as guest principal cello in the Darwin Symphony, is a regular collaborator with the Australian National College of Dance, has broadcast for ABC Classic FM Sunday Live and in 2016 became a permanent member of the Sydney Metropolitan Orchestra.

Sam began playing guitar at age 9, studying privately and also completing an Associate Diploma of music at AIM in 1995.

He was a founding member of the nine piece band “Hipnosis” performing, coordinating and arranging a wide cross section of music from 1992 to 2002 in venues, corporate functions and weddings in a full time capacity. Since 1990 Sam has been teaching guitar privately, in Secondary Schools and Community Colleges in both one to one and group settings.

In 2006 he completed his Bachelor of Music as a mature age student at AIM. Sam has also been involved in writing and arranging original music. Most recently one of his compositions was featured in a short film that was selected in the final round of the Academy affiliated short film festival “Flickerfest.”

Dr Alistair Noble began his life in music as a pianist, studying with Isobel Grigor, Alan Jenkins, and Larry Sitsky. A subsequent interest in the work of Winifred Burston (a remarkable Australian pianist who had studied with Busoni in Berlin) led to a Masters Degree in musicology, based upon extensive archival research. Alongside this historical research, Alistair found that music analysis is a way to bring together many of his diverse interests in composition, performance, and critique of music. A PhD in this field, completed at the Australian National University, presented groundbreaking work on the music of American composer Morton Feldman.

Alistair taught in the School of Music at the Australian National University for some years, in musicology, music theory, analysis, composition, and chamber music. He served as Head of Theory and Convenor of Graduate Studies. As an award-winning PhD supervisor, he has enjoyed working with many graduate-level researchers in a wide range of music-related areas and also in cognate fields such as film studies. He has been a guest-lecturer in many places, including the University of the Philippines, the Colloquium of the Paul Sacher Foundation, UNSW, and National Taiwan University. While at ANU, Alistair served for three years as  Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences. 

In 2013, Alistair published his updated Feldman research as Composing Ambiguity: the early music of Morton Feldman (Ashgate), which has been acclaimed internationally as a fundamentally important publication in this field.  

During 2014, Alistair was an invited Visiting Associate Professor in the College of Music at the National Taiwan Normal University, teaching orchestration, composition, and graduate seminars in the analysis of pop music and the sociology of music. While in Taiwan, he had the opportunity to accompany colleagues on fieldwork trips to several remote indigenous villages during major festivals, in addition to experiencing first-hand a wide range of musical performances, including Beijing-style operas, Taiwanese Nanguan, and the interesting local noise/sound-art scenes (about which Alistair has since published articles). 

In December 2015, he lectured on post-tonal music at the first Melbourne Music Analysis Summer School, held at Medley Hall, University of Melbourne. Recent compositions include the Glasteppich series (three pieces for piano, flute, and string orchestra) premiered by Arcko Symphonic with Michael Kieran Harvey and Kim Tan in December 2014, and Hauteurs/Temps (2015) for viola and percussion, to be premiered by Phoebe Green and Leah Scholes in 2016.