Erin Helyard has been acclaimed as an inspiring conductor and a virtuosic and expressive performer of the harpsichord and fortepiano. Erin graduated in harpsichord performance from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with first-class honours and the University Medal. He completed his Masters in fortepiano performance and a PhD in musicology with Tom Beghin at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montreal. His monograph Clementi and the woman at the piano: virtuosity and the market for music in eighteenth-century London was published by Oxford University Studies in Enlightenment in 2022.

As Artistic Director and co-founder of the celebrated Pinchgut Opera and the Orchestra of the Antipodes (Sydney) he has forged new standards of excellence in operatic performance in Australia. The company won Best Rediscovered Opera (2019) for Hasse’s Artaserse at the International Opera Awards in London. Pinchgut’s opera film, A Delicate Fire, won Best Australian Feature Film at the Sydney Women’s International Film Festival in 2021. Operas under his direction have been awarded Best Opera at the Helpmann Awards for three consecutive years (2015-2017) and he has received two Helpmann Awards for Best Musical Direction: one for a fêted revival of Saul (Adelaide Festival) in 2017 and the other for Hasse’s Artaserse (Pinchgut Opera) in 2019. Together with Richard Tognetti, Erin won an ARIA and an AIR award for Best Classical Album in 2020.

From 2006–2012 he was a central member of the award-winning Ensemble Caprice in Montreal. Since returning to Australia in 2014, he has collaborated with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Musica Viva, and the Australian String Quartet. Erin has distinguished himself as a conductor in dynamic performances with the Sydney, Adelaide, Tasmanian, and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, Opera Australia, ACO Collective, the Australian National Academy of Music, and the Australian Haydn Ensemble. As a duo partner he has performed and recorded with Avi Avital, Melissa Farrow, David Greco, Stephanie McCallum, James Morley, and Richard Tognetti. In 2018 he was recognised with a Music and Opera Singers Trust Achievement Award (MAA) for contribution to the arts in Australia. In 2022 Erin was an Artist in Residence at the Melbourne Recital Centre and in 2024 was Artist in Residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In 2023 he was named Limelight’s Critics’ Choice Australian Artist of the Year.

Erin is an Associate Professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and appears courtesy of Pinchgut Opera.