Vanessa Scammell

Vanessa Scammell enjoys a diverse portfolio of work as a conductor of ballet, musical theatre, concert repertoire and opera. Her most recent engagements include five performances of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with the Sydney Symphony, a double bill (The Dream / Marguerite and Armand) for The Australian Ballet, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 for the Melbourne Symphony and Megan Washington with the Tasmanian, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. 

Previously, she conducted the Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland and West Australian Symphony Orchestras in programmes such as Vera Blue, The Bamboos, Birds of Tokyo, An Evening with Anthony Warlow, Love Actually, To Barbra, With Love and Opera. In 2025, she conducted the Macao Orchestra and all six major Australian symphony orchestras; she returned to Opera Australia for The Merry Widow in 2026.

Vanessa’s postgraduate study included a Masters in Conducting; she has been the recipient of the Brian Stacey Award and the Robert and Elizabeth Albert Conducting Fellowship for The Australian Ballet. She was Musical Director for The Divorce (an opera commissioned for television by Opera Australia, Princess Pictures and the ABC) and was the Helpmann Award’s Music Director for 13 years. In 2018, she also led a symphonic tour of Planet Earth for the BBC; in 2019, she conducted the national tour of Blue Planet 2 for the same organisation.