Known for impeccable technical skill, musicality and versatility, Australian flute soloist Sally Walker performs on modern flutes and piccolo as well as historical flutes and recorders and has appeared in the London Proms, Salzburg, Lucerne, Tanglewood and Edinburgh Festivals. Grand-finalist in the Leonardo de Lorenzo International Flute Competition (Italy), and prize-winner in the Friedrich Kuhlau International Flute Competition (Germany) she was awarded scholarships from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange for postgraduate study in Germany), Ian Potter Cultural Fund and the Queen’s Trust. Earning a doctorate in music from the University of Sydney, Sally was also Senior Lecturer in Classical Performance (Woodwind) at the Australian National University School of Music for several years.
Sally has toured and recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras, is a former Principal Flute of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss, was a member of Kölner Kammerorchester and has performed as Guest Principal Flute with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, NDR Radio Philharmonie Hannover, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Manchester Camerata. Within Australia, she is regular Guest Principal Flautist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, also having performed in this role with the Adelaide and Queensland Symphony Orchestras and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. Her recorded performance of Kats-Chernin’s Chatterbox Rag features as the theme music for ABC’s Late Night Live program with David Marr.
Increasingly in demand as a concerto soloist, recent engagements include with the Orchestra Accademia I Filarmonici di Verona, Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra (on both flute and piccolo), and the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn as well as several Australian orchestras. Sally Walker was the Canberra Symphony Orchestra’s 2025 Artist in Focus, featuring in multiple soloist and chamber performances over the season, including the ACT premiere of Elena Kats-Chernin’s ‘Night and Now’ flute concerto, and a concertino by Christopher Sainsbury. Sally gave the world premiere of a specially commissioned flute concerto by acclaimed Australian composer Alex Turley, with the Geelong Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Davis, and recorded with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jessica Cottis. Regular guest artist for Canberra International Music Festival, Sally featured in the 2025 edition with ‘Living Poems of the Sea’, a multimedia exploration of human interactions with dolphins in Australia, featuring film, electronics and live flute performance with music by Lyle Chan; she also played critically acclaimed concerts as guest with ARCO, Salut! Baroque, in recital with pianist Simon Tedeschi, was again a finalist in Limelight Magazine’s 2025 ‘Artist of the Year’ awards.
Current season engagements include the world premiere performance of a work by Richard Tognetti, written especially for Sally (with pianist Stefan Cassomenos) at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival (VIC); 1:1 Concerts at the inaugural Wagga Weekender Festival (NSW), a return to Albury Chamber Music Festival (NSW) and concerts in Sydney and Canberra with leading baroque ensembles, Salut! Baroque and Apeiron Baroque. Sally will also premiere a work for solo flute and choir by composer Dan Walker, with the Canberra Choral Society.
In 2023/24, engagements included critically acclaimed standout performances as Guest Principal Flute with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in its Mahler – Song of the Earth national tour; Albury Chamber Music Festival and the highly anticipated release of a new album of flute chamber works by Luigi Boccherini (AVIE) featuring some of Australia’s most renowned musicians, earning 5 stars from BBC Music Magazine for the performances. Sally featured in Adelaide’s 2023 Illuminate Festival with Klassik Underground, Four Winds Festival, Canberra International Music Festival and the Australian Flute Festival; with Salut! Baroque, Bowral Autumn Music Festival and Elder Conservatorium’s Lunchtime Series (with pianist Vivian Choi Milton), concerts with harpist Emily Granger, and the celebrated release of a flute and harp album called ‘Something like this…’ (AVIE records) acclaimed by critics as “intoxicatingly beautiful” and “seraphic” (The Australian, 2024).
Alongside her two latest releases for AVIE, Sally has featured on the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s ARIA award-winning Beethoven and Mountain albums, Heroines with Nicole Car, Mozart’s Last Symphonies, Omega Ensemble’s Unexpected News (2020) with Nico Muhly and Phillip Glass, and ABC Classics’ Women of Note series. She has recorded three albums of flute and piano repertoire with pianist Philip Mayers, was featured on Sally Whitwell’s ARIA-nominated CD, “I was Flying”, Cyrus Meurant’s CD “Monday to Friday” and on recordings with Halycon, and other orchestras.
Devoted to both Early and Contemporary Music, having performed with Early Music ensembles such as Das Neue Orchester Köln, Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum and the Leipziger Kammerorchester, as well as Contemporary Music ensembles such as Halcyon, Sally is deeply committed to chamber music and has collaborated with colleagues across various art forms and styles, including Steven Isserlis, Elena Kats-Chernin AO, Afro Moses, Simon Tedeschi, Richard Tognetti, Dénes Várjon, and the Shanghai String Quartet.
She enjoys collaborating with composers and has premiered works by Australian composers including David Banney, Marian Budos, Andrew Chubb, Andrew Ford, Sally Greenaway, Paul Stanhope as well as Coco Nelegatti (Argentina), Afro Moses (Ghana) and Knut Müller (Germany).
Inspired by social justice and outreach initiatives, in addition to her performances, Sally directs 1:1 Concerts in Australia, a concept of performance with one musician and one listener, in a wordless exchange, bringing this unique concept to Australia, and its proliferation to Newcastle, Sydney,Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, where it featured in 2021 Adelaide Festival. Created in Germany by flautist Stephanie Winker, set designer Franziska Ritter and cultural mediator Christian Siegmund, it is inspired by the work of performance artist Marina Abramović’s “Listening differently” (2019) and its many accolades include winning Germany’s Health:Angel award in the 2021 Health Media Awards.
As an academic, Sally has presented research papers at conferences such as the Performing Wellness and Musicological Society of Australia conference, given pre-concert talks for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Musica Viva and continues to organise ANU’s annual Flute Day, drawing students from around the country, to Canberra. Being fluent in German, she has also worked as a German translator/interpreter.
Born in Canberra, Sally began her earliest musical training with Judith Clingan on recorder through the Kodály method and singing in Gaudeamus choral ensembles. She was accepted into the ANU School of Music at the age of twelve and completed the ANU Preparatory Course Diploma learning flute with Vernon Hill and Virginia Taylor. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music Degree from the University of Sydney studying flute with Geoffrey Collins and undertook private study with Timothy Hutchins in Canada. She completed Postgraduate study in Germany, receiving the Artist’s Diploma from the Hanover Hochschule für Music und Medien as a student of Prof. Andrea Lieberknecht and her Masters at the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Theater as a student of Prof. András Adorján. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts with the Early Music Unit of the University of Sydney, exploring a modern Flautist’s Perspective on the Process of Learning Early Flutes and their Literature, supervised by Neal Peres Da Costa, Alan Maddox and Hans-Dieter Michatz.
Latest News
Sally Walker is Limelight Magazine’s ‘Artist of the Year’ finalist and runner-up in 2024, and once again shortlisted finalist in 2025.
Sally Walker’s recording of Elena Kats-Chernin’s piece, Chatterbox Rag, selected as the theme music for the ABC’s famed Late Night Live program with David Marr, from 2025.
Guest Principal Flute with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sally earned widespread praise for her performances in its national Mahler’s Song of the Earth tour in May 2024, including “divinely played” (Australian Stage) and “A standout moment was the ‘duet’ between Catherine Carby and flautist Sally Walker, a moment of sheer beauty and mutual musical respect, vocal and instrument sublimely interwoven..” (Eastside FM, 13 May 2024). Read more here.
Sally Walker’s stunning new album ‘Something like this…‘ (AVIE) with harpist, Emily Granger, released to critical acclaim: read more here.
“…splendid new album by two Australian musicians… intoxicatingly beautiful” […] There is only one word for the performances: seraphic. The phrasing and articulation are meticulously poised and delivered in a beautifully natural way, especially the movement from Bach’s G minor sonata …. As an antidote to life’s stresses, this music, calming and cheering, should be on high rotation” [4.5 stars]
– The Australian, 2023 ( ‘Something like this…’ album review)
“Sally Walker has an extensive list of credits in Europe as a virtuoso baroque flautist. The concert concluded with J S Bach’s well-loved Overture and Badinerie from the Orchestral suite No.2 in B minor which is virtually a flute concerto, likely written much later than often thought, around 1739. Walker was masterly in her performance at a rapid tempo of the fiendish divisions, at times adding delicious ornamentation to the familiar roulades beloved of jazz arrangers and vocal scatters.”
– Sounds Like Sydney, 2024 (Salut! Baroque live review, Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney)
