Dr. Tania Hardy Smith – Australien

President, Symphony Orchestra Musicians’ Association

Tania Hardy Smith is a cellist with Orchestra Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. As the primary performance partner for Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet, Orchestra Victoria also maintains a busy education, outreach and concert program, both in Melbourne and throughout regional Victoria.

Following her tertiary training at the Victorian College of the Arts, Tania pursued a busy freelance and teaching career, playing for many groups including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Rantos Collegium Chamber Orchestra. In 1989 she joined the Elizabethan Melbourne Orchestra (now known as Orchestra Victoria) on a full-time basis and was a founding member of Ensemble Liason, Trio Artemis and the Tarraj Quartet which specialised in 20th century string quartet music. Tania is currently federal president of the Symphony Orchestra Musicians’ Association, the national organisation for professional orchestral symphonic instrumentalists in Australia, and Musicians Section Delegate on the Federal Council of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. She is also a contributor to the FIM IOC Working Group. In 2013 Tania gained a PhD in Archaeology from La Trobe University in Melbourne, in which she explored the influence of archaeological knowledge on art, and how this informs the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous identity in Australia.