Sarah Monk graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Painting (2007), from the Australian
National University. From 2009-2013 she worked in schools, whilst playing flute in an Experimental-art music ensemble, The Lee Scott Newcombe Ensemble, Brighton, UK.
In 2017 Sarah graduated with a Bachelor of Music with distinction in Classical flute from the University of Newcastle under the tutelage of Sally Walker and awarded the Maurice Sendak prize for the highest final recital mark for an orchestral instrument that year. In 2016, Sarah also won the UON $15000 Joy Ingall Scholarship. This helped fund a one month research trip to Chennai, India where she studied Bamboo flute under famous flutist Shashank Subramanyam.
In 2016 Sarah went to New York for the United Nations Youth Assembly conference, working with university students from the Wollotuka Institute with the group working towards a performance which combined traditional Palm Island songs with ideas around Climate change.
Sarah has an interest in new music, improvisation, and breaking traditions in performance practices. In 2014, she co-formed the experimental ensemble Tone Camerata. The group played at the Create 2308 festival 2014, This is Not art festival 2015 and 2016, and received two New Music Network grants, in 2015 and 2017.
Recently, she has collaborated with composer James Hazel and Victoria Pham from the Sonant Bodies Collective. This year they collaborated on two shows, one that won the emerging artist award at the Sydney Fringe Festival and the other as part of Crack Theatre festival, (a part of the This IS Not Art festival) in Newcastle 2017.
