Violinist Khalida De Ridder comes from a remote property in the Far North of Australia, beginning to play at the age of four. She maintains an international profile having performed in the Netherlands, Denmark, Slovenia and Spain and throughout Australia. She has received major awards including the Performers Trust Foundation Award (2013) and Origin Foundation Prize from Creative Partnerships Australia (2014) which enabled international study at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Khalida has worked in professional orchestras such as the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra (DK), the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and as Concertmaster of the Frankston Symphony Orchestra. In 2019 she signed to Italy’s leading classical music label ‘Stradivarius Milano Dischi’. There are number of international and national folk accolades to her name including Junior Australasian Fleadh Fiddle Champion (2003), Golden Fiddle award (2010), and both the Chris Wendt award (2006) and the Declan Affley award (2009) from the National Folk Festival of Australia, where also a finalist in the Youth Folk Awards (2009). At just fifteen years of age, she was awarded a Junior Cultural Australia Day medal for her contribution to folk music in Australia, invited to tutor at numerous festivals and camps nationally; in 2023 she was also awarded the Senior Cultural Australia Day medal from the Tablelands Regional Council. Khalida was the Program Director and Assistant Festival Director for the Tablelands Folk Festival (QLD) and has performed on various radio station broadcasts such as ABC (Sydney, Cairns, Wagga Wagga, Canberra, Hobart) ' Mostly Folk' (Hobart) and 3MBS (Melbourne).
Khalida graduated from a Doctorate degree in Creative Arts in 2020 at the University of Tasmania, mentored by Dr. Susan Collins and Guillaume Sutre while on residency in Paris. She dedicates much of her touring schedule to regional and remote areas of Australia and directs a chamber music festival and masterclass series in Far North Queensland.