Luke Plumb & Khalida de Ridder

About the artists

Luke Plumb

Trained in classical violin and piano, Luke Plumb began teaching himself the mandolin and swiftly became one of Australia’s most sought after session musicians. He spent 12 years touring with the cult acid-croft hypno-folkadelic band, Shooglenifty.

During this time he also recorded and toured three albums with his own band the Funky String Band, spearheaded a Scottish Arts funded project examining the music collected by the Scottish National poet Robert Burns, released his innovative and critically acclaimed solo album A Splendid Notion, and travelled to southern Greece to record a suite of his own compositions, Ten Titles, for the pan European, Eumelia Ensemble.

Through his work with Shooglenifty, Andy Irvine and his many collaborations in Australia, Luke Plumb has established a reputation as a driving force in acoustic music on the global stage. He has performed with the Australian Ballet, toured nationally with the theatre show Cafe Rebetika, and is a regular collaborator with Van Diemen's Band. He is also in high demand as a teacher and producer, also producing tours in his "spare time" including 2024's lutruwitan/Tasmanian tour by Greek-Turkish duo NikoTeini. 

Khalida de Ridder

Violinist Khalida De Ridder hails from a remote property in the far north of Australia born to Belgian and Dutch parents. Beginning to play at the age of four, soon after, began to perform at every major community event both as a soloist and folk musician, invited to collaborate and perform with high profile visiting folk artists. Khalida went on to receive numerous scholarships and prizes for further study, first in Sydney and eventually at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

She has performed in The Netherlands, Denmark and Spain. Khalida has worked in professional orchestras such as the Arhus Symphony Orchestra (DK), the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. Khalida took the position of Concertmaster with the Frankston Symphony Orchestra (2020-2023) and has consistently performed in various chamber ensembles at major Australian venues including the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre. In 2019 she signed to Italy’s leading classical music label ‘Stradivarius Milano Dischi’.

There are number of international and national folk accolades to her name including Junior Australasian Fleadh Fiddle Champion (2003), Golden Fiddle award (2010), both the Chris Wendt award (2006) and the Declan Affley award (2009) from the National Folk Festival of Australia, where also a finalist in the Youth Folk Awards (2009). At just fifteen years of age, she was awarded a Junior Cultural award from the Australian Government for her contribution to folk music in Australia, invited to tutor at numerous festivals and folk music camps nationally. Khalida was the Program Director and Assistant Festival Director for the Tablelands Folk Festival (QLD) and has performed on various radio station broadcasts such as ABC (Sydney, Cairns, Wagga Wagga, Canberra, Hobart) ' Mostly Folk' (Hobart) and 3MBS (Melbourne).

Khalida graduated with a Doctorate degree in Creative Arts in 2020 at the University of Tasmania, mentored by Dr. Susan Collins and Guillaume Sutre via residency in Paris. Khalida is in demand as a guest tutor at many string camps in Australia, conducted masterclasses for various string teacher associations and tertiary level string meetups and presents her performance practice research at National and International Research conferences. She directs a chamber music festival in North Queensland and an outreach program focusing on regionally based students.