Chiara Minotto is a Sydney-based composer and jazz saxophonist who works across jazz, chamber, and media composition. Her music explores restraint and subtlety, using texture and timbre to create organic musical landscapes. At the centre of her creative practice is an ongoing commitment to developing her compositional voice and contributing to a more gender-inclusive jazz scene.

In 2025, she graduated with First Class Honours in Composition for Creative Industries from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she now works as a casual academic. That same year, for the SIMA Women’s Jazz Festival, she founded and led Mary Lou & Beyond, an all-female and gender-diverse big band of Conservatorium students celebrating female composers, performing to a sold-out audience.

Her compositions have been performed by the Sydney Youth Orchestra, University of New South Wales, Mosaic, Spectra, and the Sydney Conservatorium Jazz Orchestras. She has undertaken mentorships in jazz composition with Miho Hazama through the Women in Jazz Organization (WIJO), and in composition and conducting with Claudia Doeffinger, and has participated in workshops with Sydney’s Jazz Composer Co-Op.

In 2025–2026, Chiara was awarded the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s inaugural Emerging Jazz Composer Prize and was named a DownBeat Student Undergraduate Winner for Large Ensemble Original Composition for her work Still Water. She plans to record this piece in 2026 as part of her debut album as a composer and bandleader with her New Dynamic Orchestra.