Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Anne Boyd received her Award at the Sydney Conservatorium last Friday  

Anne Boyd has received the 2014 Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award for her outstanding contribution to music in Australia. The Award is presented annually by the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

A distinguished composer and music educator, Boyd studied music at the University of Sydney in the 1960s, where she was one of Peter Sculthorpe's first students. Sculthorpe had a profound influence on her; in his music she was, for the first time, able to hear an expression of her own experience of the Australian landscape. Before returning to the University of Sydney in 1990 as a Professor of Music, Boyd spent almost two decades overseas at the University of Hong Kong as its Foundation Head of the Department of Music (1981-90) and teaching at the University of Sussex in England (1972-77).

During her career, Boyd has received several national and international accolades for her work. In 1996 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution as a composer and music educator. In 2003 she received an honorary degree from the University of York, England, and, in 2005, she was the recipient of the Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the Classical Music Awards, presented by APRA and the AMC.

With a strong interest in Indigenous Australian spirituality, Boyd is currently exploring a collaborative 'two ways' approach in a trilogy of music theatre works on significant Australian women, all of whom worked closely with Aboriginal people: Daisy Bates, Olive Pink and Annie Lock. The first of these, a full length opera Daisy Bates at Ooldea, was premiered by the Sydney Conservatorium's opera students in 2012.

The Bernard Heinze Award was initiated in 1982 following the death of Sir Bernard Heinze, one of the pioneers of orchestral musical life in Australia and the Ormond Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne for 31 years. Past recipients of the Award include composers Brett Dean, Carl Vine and Peter Sculthorpe, conductors Simone Young and John Hopkins, horn player Barry Tuckwell, violinist Richard Tognetti, and musicologist Roger Covell.

Further links

Anne Boyd - AMC profile