Trio Arapiles

Australian-based Dutch saxophonist and one of Australia’s leading creatives.

Niels Bijl looks back on a vibrant and extremely successful career in Europe, with highlights including working with legendary conductors Valeri Gergiev, Lorin Mazel, Mariss Jansons and Jaap van Zweden, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, World Orchestra for Peace and Anima Eterna. CD recordings with his world renowned Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, recorder player Ronald Moelker. 

Since moving to Australia (2020) he has collaborated with ANAM, Monash, the Melbourne Con,  VMTA, VCASS, MSO, Orch VIC, Auckland Philharmonia, NZSO, NZSM, and as a soloist with Heidelberg Wind Band, Stonnington Symphony, GSO and others. he instigated Yarragon Studio Concerts with monthly concerts and 2 Festivals each year, runs the West Gippsland Concert Band and teaches at VCASS and several music education programs in West Gippsland. His true passion lies in chamber music, with a wide variety of collaborations and ensembles from the Clinch Sax Quartet to Duo de Fesch (with Peter Hagen - Harpsichord), and cross-ever projects with Tony Gould, Marshall McGuire and others. Trio Arapiles is his most current and successful collaboration, breathing new life in Australia’s chamber music scene by creating brand new repertoire for sax-bassoon-piano, reinvigorating classic masterpieces by Beethoven, Mozart and Glinka and proving  that wind instruments are a vibrant part of Australia’s future in chamber music.

Niels also likes to cook and makes a mean coffee. Some say he never sleeps. But in fact, he does. Really well, actually . 

Adelaide-based pianist Yundi Yuan has performed widely across Australia as a soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician. As a chamber musician, Yundi is a founding member of Trio Arapiles. The trio recently performed at the Malvern Chamber Festival, the Yarragon Studio Music Festival and the Sydney Conservatorium Staff and Chamber Music Series in 2026. As a soloist, Yundi’s career highlights include performances at the Hong Kong String Orchestra’s Australian Debut Tour opening concert (2025), as a guest artist at the 2022 Freedman Classical Award at the Sydney Opera House, and performing Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (2019) with the Elder Conservatorium Chamber Orchestra. 

Yundi studies piano with Mrs Eleonora Sivan and Professor Anna Goldsworthy. She has won the 2018 Recitals Australia Lunch Hour Award and the SA State Final of Young Virtuoso, and was a national finalist in the 2016 Young Virtuosi Award. As a graduate of the University of Adelaide with First Class Honours in 2018, she went on to complete a Master of Philosophy in 2021. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Elder Conservatorium of Music.

Hailed by the Daily Telegraph as “a new star…who wields his instrument with virtuosic skill and with moves you usually associate with a rock guitarist”, Matthew Kneale is one of Australia’s leading lights on the bassoon.

He was the first ever bassoonist to be awarded the prestigious Freedman Classical Fellowship. Matthew used this award in late 2019 to embark on an international concert tour that aimed to shatter preconceived notions by presenting the bassoon as a brilliant solo and chamber entity in its own right, with a strong emphasis on music by Australia’s leading young composers.

Matthew is a founding member of Arcadia Winds, Australia’s leading young wind ensemble, and Musica Viva’s inaugural FutureMakers musicians. Recent highlights have included performances at the Perth International Arts Festival with the Australian String Quartet; at the Musica Viva Festival with piano virtuoso Lambert Orkis; and at the UKARIA Cultural Centre with woodwind masters Ole Kristian Dahl and Thorsten Johanns. He has toured China thrice with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra and once with Arcadia Winds, performed all across Europe with the Australian Youth Orchestra and in Russia with the Melbourne Conservatorium Orchestra, and attended summer schools in Norway, the Netherlands and Manchester, England.