Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Percussionists in Kate Neal's Semaphore  

[Edited 11 August - Waleed Aly added to presenters] Along with the announcement of the recipient of the prestigious Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award, details of presenters and the program of the 2016 Art Music Awards ceremony in Melbourne on 16 August have also been made public today.

Musical curator of the evening, pianist and artistic director Gabriella Smart has assembled a powerful collection of performances for the event. Art Music Awards finalist Cathy Milliken's work Red Robin will be performed by Lina Andonovska on piccolo flute. Speak Percussion, also finalists for the 2016 Art Music Awards, will perform an extract of their program Fluorophone, a composition that moves between noise, theatrical music and virtuosic instrumentalism in a 'synesthetic display of light and sound'. Another finalist, Erik Griswold, along with the Australian Art Orchestra, will be performing an excerpt from his Jazz Work of the Year-shortlisted Water Pushes Sand: Forgotten Streets. The performance will also feature Peter Knight, Mindy Wang, Sam Pankhurst and Vanessa Tomlinson.

Kate Neal's work Semaphore made the Instrumental Work of the Year shortlist - in the Awards ceremony an excerpt from this work will be performed by percussionists Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Madi Chwasta, Matthew Horsley, Hamish Upton and dancer Timothy Walsh. Semaphore Band and Dancers are also shortlisted in the Performance of the Year category.

Performing a rendition of 'Lonely Boy' by Aboriginal musician Warren H. Williams will be singer Derik Lynch, soprano Deborah Kayser, saxophonist Derek Pascoe, guitarist Barry Campbell, and dancer and didjeridu player Trevor Jamieson.

Confirmed as a special guest presenter for the 2016 Art Music Awards is ABC Classic FM's Mairi Nicolson, whose 30-year love affair with classical music and radio began after she graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, majoring in piano and singing. Mairi can be heard each Monday to Friday afternoon on Classic FM as she explores the lives and careers of people who make music. Also joining the Art Music Awards as guest presenters are the Walkley Award-winning journalist Waleed Aly, distinguished soprano Merlyn Quaife AM and Dr Joel Crotty, senior lecturer in Musicology at Monash University.

> Read also: Helen Gifford recipient of the 2016 Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award (Resonate 1 August 2016) and '2016 Art Music Awards: finalists announced' (Resonate 19 July 2016)