University of Melbourne Names Recipient of the 2025 Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award

Violinist Wilma Smith has been honored for her outstanding contribution to musical life in Australia

The Fijian-New Zealand violinist Wilma Smith has been named as the recipient of the 2025 Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award, given by the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) to a musician who has made an outstanding contribution to musical life in Australia.

Smith was concertmaster of the MSO between 2003 and 2014, during which time she cultivated a close artistic relationship with Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis. He described Smith's interpretation of Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending to be "unquestionably the most beautiful" that he had ever heard.

Since leaving the MSO, Smith has supported a great deal of emerging young artists through her Wilma & Friends chamber music series. She has also served as Second Violinist of the Flinders Quartet, and is Co-Artistic Director of the annual Martinborough Music Festival in New Zealand.

Born in Suva, Fiji, Smith grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. She studied at the New England Conservatory, after which she co-founded the Boston-based Lydian String Quartet, winners of the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music and multiple prizes at the Evian, Banff, and Portsmouth International String Quartet Competitions.

A founder member of the New Zealand String Quartet, she also served as Concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra between 1993 and 2003.

"Wilma Smith’s list of achievements is extraordinary and beyond any doubt an example of the finest Australia has to offer the international music scene," said Professor Gary McPherson, Ormond Chair of Music at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. "She has served as Concertmaster of the New Zealand and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, and her career is replete with rave reviews from critics and conductors who have admired her outstanding performances as a violinist of the highest caliber.

"Across her career she has maintained her reputation as an orchestral and chamber music specialist with longstanding musical partnerships with renowned New Zealand and Australian musicians," he added. "Importantly, Wilma is known for mentoring young musicians and the opportunities she has given many now well-known professionals at the beginning of their musical careers. We celebrate her abilities as a violinist and thank her for the countless memories we have of performances she has given across the past four decades."