11 art music composers have been awarded $7,500 grants for new projects.
The 2024 Art Music Fund recipients are Anna Liebzeit, Cameron Deyell, Christine Pan, Dominik Karski, Emily Sheppard, Eve de Castro-Robinson, James Rushford, Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim, Nathaniel Otley, Peter Knight and Sia Ahmad.
The Art Music Fund is a partnership of APRA AMCOS, the Australian Music Centre and SOUNZ.
Eleven composers from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are the recipients of the Art Music Fund, with each receiving a $7,500 (AUD) grant towards the commission of a proposed work.
The Art Music Fund, celebrating its ninth funding round, is an initiative of APRA AMCOS, in partnership with the Australian Music Centre and SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music.
The 2024 Art Music Fund recipients are Anna Liebzeit, Cameron Deyell, Christine Pan, Dominik Karski, Emily Sheppard, Eve de Castro-Robinson, James Rushford, Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim, Nathaniel Otley, Peter Knight and Sia Ahmad.
This year's $82,500 total allocation will support a range of fascinating new projects both personal and global in scale. Commissions delve into a range of topics: ecological impacts and ocean sound, 3D sound, Chinese rituals and beliefs, gender identity and faith, and much more.
Since 2016, the fund has granted more than half a million dollars to new works that have been presented in Australia, New Zealand and around the world at concert halls, festivals, and immersive settings. This year's recipients join an impressive list of composers to benefit from the fund including Liza Lim, Sandy Evans, Eve Klein, Matt Keegan, Nardi Simpson, Hamed Sadeghi and Connor D'Netto.
The successful applicants’ compositions demonstrate the high level of creativity, innovation and collaboration across disciplines, genres and formats, while working in a challenging funding landscape.
Sydney-based composer Christine Pan is embarking on ‘The Parts We Give’, a song-cycle exploring the nuanced presentation of love of an immigrant Chinese family residing in Australia. It will begin its worldwide journey in Western Sydney, with further performances with Blush Opera and the University of New England, and restaged by Tenth Muse Initiative in Perth in 2026. An international premiere is planned for the ACMI Conference in Los Angeles, as well as an interactive presentation by French-based FABLE ARTS.
2024 Art Music Fund recipient Christine Pan (AU):
The Art Music Fund gives a platform for eclectic voices of Australian creatives; to tell important stories and to challenge the boundaries of creative practice while doing so. It is a way to propel Australian music across borders, throughout both local and international spaces and connect with global audiences.
Ōtepoti, Aotearoa (Dunedin, New Zealand) composer Nathaniel Otely, creates music through an ecological lens. His commissioned work this rising tide, these former wetlands will be a new chamber orchestra work for the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and the Southbank Sinfonia that explores the ecological and cultural histories of former wetlands areas in both Aotearoa and the UK.
2024 Art Music Fund recipient Nathaniel Otley (NZ):
The opportunities for the commissioning of Art Music in Aotearoa and Australia are incredibly limited so having the Art Music Fund dedicated to supporting the creation of Art Music in the two countries is very important. You can see looking at previous recipients the important role it plays in getting important and resonant projects off the ground and we'd be worse off as a community without its continued presence.
Catherine Haridy, CEO, Australian Music Centre
The recipients of this year’s Art Music Fund each have a unique and powerful creative voice, demonstrating the vibrancy of art music practice in Australia and New Zealand, and which deserve to be heard. We are proud to continue our partnership with APRA AMCOS and SOUNZ in this initiative to support the development of their work.
Claire Szabó, Interim Chief Executive | SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music I Toi te Arapūoru
SOUNZ is very pleased to be continuing our work with APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre in 2024, this year supporting two recipients from Aotearoa New Zealand. The quality of applications was high once again, representing the innovation and diversity that underpins the direction of art music that Kiwi composers, collaborators and performers are taking. Well done to our winners and all that applied.
Dean Ormston, CEO, APRA AMCOS
The Art Music Fund continues to grow in impact, reach and prestige and is a testament to the outstanding work of its many recipients over the years. We are proud to continue to make this funding possible and grateful to our partners Australian Music Centre and SOUNZ, and cannot wait to hear and see what this year's composers bring to the world.
Art Music Fund applications were assessed on the viability of the proposed project, the quality of the work, and the strategy for the life and reach of the work.
| Composer | Location | Funded Work |
|---|---|---|
| Anna Liebzeit | VIC | The new music composition weaves into an installation that includes visual elements in five parts: bones, ghosts, bells, bricks, and hair. As a First Nations artist and educator my pedagogical and creative manoeuvre of 'respectful empathy' inspires the music spanning personal and socio-cultural locations. |
| Cameron Deyell | VIC | ECHO will be created in an immersive offshore environment, with the ocean as a collaborator. The electro-acoustic work responds to ecological processes and will unfold through a creative development with movement artists at Dancenorth Australia before becoming a live performance work and an instrumental studio-recorded album. |
| Christine Pan | NSW | ‘The Parts We Give’ (TPWG) is a song-cycle of eight songs exploring the nuanced presentation of love of an immigrant Chinese family residing in Australia. For two voices, piano, and electroacoustics, TPWG will be premiered in Western Sydney with further Australian and international performances to follow in 2025-2026. |
| Dominik Karski | WA | The work will be scored for two double basses and written for ELISION soloists Kathryn Schulmeister and Rohan Dasika. Indivisibility will essentially be about two similar yet distinct voices striving to attain a state of complete, perfect unity and certainty. The inspiration came from the Planck length (the smallest unit of length in quantum physics). |
| Emily Sheppard | TAS | Emily will write a cross-genre suite exploring the wide-ranging myths of sirens. The suite will feature bespoke kelp and eel-skin instruments and marine field recordings, written for the unique sound-world of the Van Diemen’s Fiddles. |
| Eve de Castro-Robinson | NZ | Earth’s eye, for clarinet, violin, viola and cello The title is from a quote of Thoreau, “A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” It is appropriate, given the physical setting of Wanaka and surroundings, and gives scope to look inward, to create a sonic statement of depth, reflectiveness, and vivid colour. |
| James Rushford | VIC | Composing and presenting ‘Love Knots’, a new work for quarter-tone bass flute, contrabass and Lumatone microtonal keyboard, performed by Rebecca Lane, Jon Heilbron and Rushford. It explores the possibility of ‘3D’ harmony through an innovative score system. It will be performed across Europe and Australia in 2025. |
| Mindy Meng Wang / Monica Lim | VIC | Opera for the Dead (OFT) is a multi-artform musical performance for AsiaTOPA 2025, inspired by rituals and beliefs surrounding ancestor worship, death and afterlife in Chinese and Chinese diaspora culture. It combines live music performance, new/digital media and physical installation to create a participatory contemporary experience of grief, reflection and healing process. |
| Nathaniel Otley | NZ | this rising tide, these former wetlands will be a new chamber orchestra work for the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and the Southbank Sinfonia that explores the ecological and cultural histories of former wetlands areas in both Aotearoa and the UK; finding and voicing how the echoes of these complex histories continue to resonate today. |
| Peter Knight | VIC | Reality Hunger is a suite of compositions for trumpet, electronics, ondes Martenot, and string quartet in collaboration with French ondes Martenot virtuoso, Nadia Ratsimandresy. The compositions will respond to sections of author David Shields’ influential work of literary collage, Reality Hunger, and will incorporate electroacoustic techniques, field recording, traditional scoring, and studio practice. |
| Sia Ahmad | ACT | I will be working on a song cycle for voice, string quartet and electronics to perform live with The Letter String Quartet (TLSQ). Inspired by contemporary classical, spiritual jazz and modern R'n'B forms, this new work explores the theme of gender identity and faith, directly inspired by my lived experience. |