Celia Craig is an award-winning oboist, synesthete, and visionary creative leader celebrated for her vibrant, colour-rich approach to music and bold cross-genre collaborations. Former Principal Oboe with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and former Principal cor anglais with the BBC Symphony Orchestra London, she is the 2025–26 SA Biennial Artist and 2024 Creative Arts Fellow at the National Library of Australia. Celia performs on a Lorée Etoile oboe.
Winner of the 2023 Australian Women in Music Award for Classical Excellence, Celia now serves on the AWMA jury, mentors and coaches for the Australian Youth Orchestra, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and was the dedicatee of Master of the King’s Music, Dame Judith Weir’s Oboe Concerto, co-commissioned by three leading Australian symphony orchestras.
A lifelong synesthete, Celia experiences sound as colour—an extraordinary neurodivergent perception that deeply informs her artistic vision. Her current research pays tribute to fellow synesthete and pioneering South Australian composer Dr. Miriam Hyde. In 1990, she was personally invited by the London Symphony Orchestra to study with another renowned synesthete, Leonard Bernstein, in Japan.
She has recorded at Abbey Road Studios, performed across six continents, and released celebrated recordings of sonatas by Poulenc, Saint-Saëns, and York Bowen with acclaimed pianist Konstantin Shamray. As founder of Artaria (2017), she now leads her own genre-blending projects and offers Flow Coaching for creative development.
Upcoming releases include Chromesthesia with Collectif: Arc en Ciel—a fully improvised album recorded in nature—and the 2026 world premiere of Carl Vine AO’s Oboe Sonata, performed with pianist Michael Ierace.
“Celia Craig creates a mesmerising, unworldly sound with the oboe, transporting the listener into a state of receptivity…”
— Barefoot Review, As the Universe Expands by Glyn Lehman, June 2025
Photo © Geoffrey Fighiera