Natalie Nicolas is a Sydney-based contemporary classical composer, lecturer, and researcher. She earned her Master of Music and PhD from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Known for evoking calm and catharsis, her emotionally driven music blends classical minimalism with contemporary influence. Nicolas has composed works for major ensembles, including the Sydney, Melbourne, and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Australian String Quartet. Her award-winning output includes an ARIA-nominated piece for the Hush Foundation, designed to support healthcare environments. Active in music education and health-focused research, Nicolas remains a prominent force in Australian composition.
Focused on evoking calm and catharsis, her emotionally driven music aligns with her research in music and emotions. Her 2018 album We Won’t Let You Down, written for the ACO Collective with funding from the Hush Foundation, exemplifies this, and the album received an ARIA nomination in 2019. This was complemented in 2025 by the album Peaceful Moments.
Nicolas has had the pleasure of writing for numerous enembles and performers including the Sydney, Tasmania, Canberra, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, the Australian String Quartet, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, the Goldner String Quartet, percussionist Claire Edwardes, and The Song Company. Her accolades include the ASQ Andrew Ford National Composers Forum (2013), National Women Composer’s Development Program (2016–2018), and the Harold and Gwenneth Harris Endowment for Medical Humanities Harris Award (2019/20). Her achievements extend to winning the Flinders Quartet Composition Competition (2017, 2019), the MSO Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers’ Program (2021), and being featured on ABC Classic’s “AusMusic Month” and “Best of Australian Classical Music” playlists in 2018, 2020, and 2022. In 2021, her music premiered at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) with the Southern Cross Soloists and Slava Grigoryan to their largest audience in 26 years.
Nicolas’s compositions have resonated in China, the US, and Canada. She participated in the Connecticut Summerfest in 2021, collaborating with the Grammy-nominated ZOFO piano duo on her piece Bloom, which has since been performed on a US tour by Alex Raineri and Maxwell Foster.
Co-leading a health and creativity research team at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, she created an immersive string orchestra work for the centre’s tenth anniversary, Something from Nothing, which was premiered by Ensemble Apex in 2022.
Recent works include Sydney Dreaming (2023), commissioned by Omega Ensemble and premiered at the Sydney Opera House, and By the Tide of the Moon, premiered by the Flinders Quartet and programmed in their 25th anniversary Australian tour in 2025.
In 2024, Nicolas was awarded the prestigious Layton Emerging Composer Fellowship for 2025, resulting in the commissioning of a new chamber work for the Australia Ensemble. She was also awarded first prize in the 2024 Australian Music Composition Competiton which facilitated a new commission for solo guitar for Matt Withers in collaboration with the visual artist Olga Garner-Morris.
