Croissants & Whiskey

About the artists

Combining four of Melbourne’s most versatile and in demand musicians, prog-baroque quartet Croissants and Whiskey brings a new energy to old instruments.

An unconventional blend of Harpsichord, G Violone, Baroque Viola, and Recorders creates new and unexpected timbres, blending the sonorous with the sharp, and making the old new again. Performing both baroque and modern compositions, Croissants and Whiskey is currently commissioning new works from diverse Australian voices, including an upcoming recording of Elizabeth Younan's The Fertile Crescent for the ABC Composer Commissioning Fund.

Formed during 2020’s stage 4 lockdown, Croissants and Whiskey is named from the refreshing libations at those first joyous post-pandemic rehearsals. Joy Lee, Ryan Williams, Katie Yap, and Miranda Hill bring musicality, focus, and humour to their work, making any performance one not to miss.

Individually, Joy, Ryan, Katie, and Miranda have performed with Australia’s elite ensembles, including: Elision, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, Inland Concerts, Astra, Melbourne Baroque Orchestra, Arcko, Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, Homophonic! Genesis Baroque, and the major Symphony and Opera Orchestras.

Joy Lee, harpsichord

Joy Lee is a harpsichordist and pianist who lives in Melbourne, who plays and is interested in new and old music for both instruments. She has been playing piano for most of her life but upon starting to play the harpsichord in 2018, somewhat lost her soul to it and now thinks about it constantly. She regularly performs in chamber, ensemble and solo contexts, in various venues. Joy spent her early life in Perth and studied piano and fortepiano at UWA, continuing at the Canberra School of Music with Larry Sitsky. She is well known for her connection to the Astra Choir and her own contemporary early music ensemble Croissants & Whiskey.

Ryan Williams, recorders

Ryan Williams is a recorder & ocarina player, improviser, and interdisciplinary-performance maker. His arts practice focuses on creating new music and transdisciplinary projects with artists and communities. Ryan performs and creates within improvisatory & exploratory music, site-specific/installation contexts, traditional music from Eastern Europe, Japan & Ireland, western art music & jazz, and popular folk music. He has a PhD in free improvisation on the recorder and has performed at major Australian and international festivals including Falls Festival, Mona Foma, Setouchi Triennale (Japan), Moers Festival (Germany), and Woodford Folk Festival. He regularly performs with leading arts companies, including Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Elision Ensemble & The Australian Art Orchestra. 

Katie Yap, viola

Violist, curator and composer Katie Yap is an artist who brings people together. She uses her instrument’s role of collaborator to amplify the voices of her colleagues and audience with her own warm, authentic voice. Through deeply layered curation, she shares her music as a natural part of life, as a way to build connection in real time. 

Born in Meanjin/Brisbane and now based in nipaluna/Hobart, Katie is the 2022 Freedman Fellow, a 2023-4 Musica Viva Australia FutureMaker, and 2024-5 ANAM/Ian Potter Emerging Performer Fellow. Her focus in these projects explores a life-long fascination with improvisation, collaborative composition, and her love of the natural world.

Chamber music being closest to her heart, she is a founding member of the Gryphon Baryton Trio, baroque viola/synth duo Bronzewing, and is co-artistic director of crossover folk/baroque group Wattleseed Ensemble. From 2021-24, she was was the founding artistic director of 3MBS’s women-in-music chamber festival ‘Music, She Wrote’.

She plays regularly with Australia’s top period and modern ensembles including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Van Diemen’s Band and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and is also the Artistic Coordinator with VDB. In her spare time, she is apprenticed in the fine arts of Hainanese chicken rice and Dutch apple tart; and loves to watch turbo chooks chase each other down near the Newtown Rivulet. 

Miranda Hill, G violone

Described by the ABC as “a woman changing the face of classical music”, Miranda Hill is dedicated to championing the work of under-heard musicians, and bringing new music to diverse audiences.  After studying at the VCA, University of Michigan, Hartt School of Music, and a sabbatical in London studying violone, Miranda has an active double bass and G violone performing career spanning historically informed baroque to free jazz, with an unexpected sideline in community marching bands.

Starting on violin and graduating to bigger and better things with the double bass, Miranda is now an enthusiastic proponent of the G violone, the 6 stringed fretted beauty of the late renaissance and early baroque. Taking this instrument to new and modern heights with commissions from contemporary composers, improvisation, and grooves with Prog-Baroque quartet Croissants & Whiskey. Artistic Director of Homophonic!, a long running concert series of chamber music by LGBTIQ+ composers, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Prog-Baroque quartet Croissants & Whiskey, and a core member of Genesis Baroque, Melbourne Baroque Orchestra, BOLT ensemble, Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble, and performs with early and contemporary ensembles around Australia, and can be heard regularly on ABC classic FM, releasing a "pride playlist" in 2023.

In 2023 Miranda won the prestigious Luminary Award for Homophonic! services to the Victorian art music community at the APRA AMCOS art music awards, finalist in the 2022 Melbourne Awards, and in 2025 is a finalist for the Pride Awards for outstanding contribution to the arts.