If there was any doubt whether Ana de la Vega had the chops to deliver the Snow Concert Hall’s lofty vision, check out the 2026 season. Photo: Snow Concert Hall.
When Ana de la Vega says Snow Concert Hall’s 2026 season will blow audiences away, you’d better believe it.
The first artistic director of Canberra’s world-class concert hall was not only briefed by the late, great Terry Snow himself on a vision for a venue of unparalleled significance in the nation’s capital, but she also has the experience, connections and chops to pull it off.
Ana’s love of the flute took her from life on a Kiama farm to Europe, where she studied at the Paris Conservatoire. Her first CD release — Mozart and Myslivecek Concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra — catapulted her to overnight stardom.
It was CD of the week in 11 countries and a best-selling classical album worldwide.
Prominent German magazine Der Spiegel proclaimed “a star is born”, and cultural television channel Arte described in a documentary a Cinderella story of a girl from a farm who blazed onto the international stage.
None of it was an accident.
“The flute is not the piano — flautists have to create their careers,” Ana says. “I have been incredibly privileged to enjoy the career I now have, but I had to be entrepreneurial and resourceful to make it happen.”
Over her 16 years in Europe, she got to know the players and built relationships with big-name artists and their managers.
“They know and trust me,” she says.
There was an uncanny synchronicity to Ana’s return to Australia during the pandemic, when the Snow Concert Hall concert series was still conceptual and needed someone both connected and savvy in the music world.
As its first artistic director, she was charged with ensuring Terry Snow’s namesake institution fulfilled its destiny.
“I spoke to Terry about his vision before he built the hall. It was to create a world-class venue, which he achieved well and beyond, very much together with the headmaster of Canberra Grammar School, Dr Justin Garrick. It was to be a gift, not just to the school, but — and he was very clear about this — to Canberra,” she says.
“There has never been a hall of this significance and acoustics here before, one that lifts the profile of Canberra as an arts capital. It’s another stop for international artists, building a stronger case for touring Australia.
“My job is to fill it with world-class performances and to create unparalleled experiences for Canberra audiences.”
The hall launched in 2023 with five concerts, expanded to a full season in 2024 and two in 2025.
This year’s program, with good reason, has Ana more excited than ever.
“We’re unveiling a concert season that’s set to be one of the most dynamic and diverse yet,” she says.
The 2026 season kicks off in March with world-renowned vocal ensemble The King’s Singers, who will follow their concert with an educational event the next day, inviting 150 amateur singers to join a four-hour singing session before performing live that afternoon alongside the group itself.
In May, Australian-British mezzo-soprano Helen Sherman joins Opera Australia soprano Jane Ede in a stellar lineup of the most iconic arias and duos of all time.
“We’re talking two of Australia’s most celebrated opera stars uniting for one concert,” Ana says. “They are a proven entity, having just done Carmen together to rave reviews, but this will be a blockbuster concert of hand-picked arias.”
Chamber music returns in August with the award-winning Sitkovetsky Piano Trio, founded at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Their rich and expressive program features Beethoven’s Ghost Trio, Shostakovich’s haunting Trio No. 2, and a rarely heard gem by 19th-century French composer Cécile Chaminade.
“Audiences can expect chamber music at its greatest,” Ana says.
Following closely are Dutch piano sensations Lucas and Arthur Jussen, whose electrifying brotherly synergy brings storytelling and sparkle to works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Stravinsky.
“It’s four hands, one piano,” Ana says. “The Jussen brothers are a household name — arguably the biggest in classical music to come out of Holland.”
September brings one of Ana’s greatest gets for the Snow Concert Hall yet — the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is coming.
“It has been many years since Australia’s most celebrated orchestra has come to Canberra, and this punctuates what we’re doing here,” she says. “We’re changing how the Australian capital contributes to the classical music landscape in Australia.”
The season closes in October with a rare and intimate solo recital from “the Godfather of Australian piano playing”, Piers Lane, who will deliver an evening of Chopin’s exquisite and revelatory Nocturnes.
Before it all, Ana herself will close the 2025 season with a recital of her fourth CD, Amazon number-one bestseller My Paris.
For more information or to book, visit Snow Concert Hall.
