Celia Craig, BA Hons (York) LRAM, ARAM, EMCC

Oboist - Educator - Arts Leader - Coach

Create SA Biennial Artist 2025-26, Creative Arts Fellow 2024 at the National Library of Australia, and Excellence in Classical Award-winner at the Australian Women in Music Awards 2023, Celia promotes broader public awareness of the neurodivergent experience through classical music.

Based in Adelaide, Australia’s only UNESCO City of Music, she places special emphasis on South Australia’s landscape and history, creating musical experiences with unique collaborators for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Her goal is to help people experience focus, calm, and connection through live music.

Celia was formerly Chairman of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, President of the Australasian Double Reed Society, and Principal Oboe of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. A resident of Adelaide, she is regularly invited to teach at leading institutions including the Royal Academy of Music, where she was elected an Associate in 1997.

Trained by world-renowned musicians such as Leonard Bernstein (a synesthete), Béla de Csillery (a pupil of Kodály), and Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor), Celia was destined for a life in music. She was a scholar and violinist at The Purcell School in London (a specialist music boarding school under the patronage of King Charles III).

Growing up with developmental, or innate, synaesthesia, specifically chromaesthesia, Celia has perceived colour in harmony since the age of three. Synaesthesia is “a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway: people with developmental synesthesia are ‘neurodivergent.’” (Cleveland Clinic).

Following an elite career as Principal Oboe and Cor Anglais with several orchestras—touring five continents, recording at Abbey Road Studios, and becoming the dedicatee of Master of the King’s Music Judith Weir’s Oboe Concerto—Celia now leads as Create SA’s Biennial Artist in 2025. She has founded Collectif: Arc en Ciel, a groundbreaking live improvisation group inspired by neurodiversity. This unique quartet builds on Celia’s three years touring Australian primary schools with her Colours of Home synaesthesia program, in collaboration with guitarist Caspar Hawksley.

Celia founded the globally distributed, chromaesthesia-inspired record label Artaria in 2017, winning the WinnovationSA Arts Award in 2020. Named after the landmark Beethoven v. Artaria copyright case (1803-4), the label is best accessed via Bandcamp.

In 2025, Celia qualified as a foundation lived-experience coach through the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s Ignite program. She specialises in supporting neurodiverse clients and musicians, fostering greater understanding and inclusion of neurodiversity within the arts.

Contact the host of SONGS WITHOUT WORDS: Tarrawatta Community Residency