Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Eleven composers from Australia and New Zealand are the recipients of the Art Music Fund, with each receiving a $7,500 grant towards the commission of a proposed work.

The Art Music Fund is an initiative of APRA AMCOS, in partnership with the Australian Music Centre and New Zealand's SOUNZ.

The 2023 Art Music Fund recipients are Andrew Ford, Aviva Endean, Brooke Green, Connor D'Netto, Elizabeth Jigalin, Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung, Nadia Freeman, Netanela Mizrahi, Salina Fisher, Victoria Pham and Will Guthrie.

This year's $82,500 total allocation will support a range of fascinating new projects both personal and global in scale. Commissions range from the story of an Irish convict who lived her last days in a Sydney asylum, an adaption of Maeve Marsden's Queerstories, a Chinese-Australian sonic history, the next chapter in The Djari Project, an electronic work about indentured Indian labourers sent to Fiji, and 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. As repeat recipients in this round, Aviva Endean (2020) and Connor D'Netto (2018), have both seen their profiles increase in recent years.

The successful applicants' compositions demonstrate the high level of creativity, innovation and collaboration happening amidst the challenges facing the sector.

Based between Sydney and Paris, composer Victoria Pham's An Old Belief song cycle will be premiered as part of the European-Australian Chamber Music Festival in 2024, where she holds the inaugural position of composer-in-residence.

She is also a current PhD candidate in Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

2023 Art Music Fund recipient Victoria Pham:

I am particularly grateful for the Art Music Fund for its history and mission to support more experimental art music works, thus giving an opportunity to such a vibrantly diverse collection of works to breathe into music, and making a financial investment for emerging and early-career composers such as myself.

2023 Art Music Fund recipients:

Andrew Ford (NSW) - I Sing the Birth will be a piece for treble voices and electric guitar, written for Luminescence Children's Choir, the Flanders Boys Choir, the Estonian TV Girl's Choir and others. It is a Christmas celebration with words ranging from the 15th century to today, and from Europe to Australia.

Aviva Endean (VIC) - The Cloud Maker will generate a concert length work, inspired by goddesses from Maori, Korean, Nordic, Jewish, Celtic and Filipino cultures. Using the personal and universal themes that arise from these shared stories, The Cloud Maker will develop refined sonic worlds for their improvisations, which capture the magnitude of these archetypal tales.

Brooke Green (NSW) - Brooke's third great grandmother spent her last years 'senile' at the Newington Asylum for Infirm and Destitute Women. She was transported from Limerick, Ireland to NSW in 1835 for her first offence: stealing calico. When Limerick-based harpsichordist Dr Yonit Kosovske asked Brooke to compose a new work for baroque violin, bass viol and harpsichord, this story came to mind.

Connor D'Netto (QLD) - In collaboration with Divisi Chamber Singers, pianist Coady Green, and award-winning Australian writer and playwright Maeve Marsden, Connor is adapting stories from Marsden's Queerstories into a new song-cycle, for eight voices and piano.

Elizabeth Jigalin (NSW) - Earbuds is a five-movement work composed for five exceptional percussion/flute duos from across Australia and overseas. The work will showcase the unique artistic identities of each ensemble and incorporate them into the work's character and direction. Earbuds will convey through music the joy, intimacy and dynamism of living music practice, play and experimentation.

Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung (VIC) - This project speculates a Chinese-Australian sonic history, using experimental archival sound technologies and historical tunings. Composer/erhu player Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung will lead this project with a team of collaborators, reimagining the collection of Chinese musical instruments, recordings and artefacts held at the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo.

Nadia Freeman (NZ) - Nadia Freeman intends to honour her ancestors using electronic instrumental music, live sampling, song and theatre to tell the relatively unknown history of the 60,000 indentured labourers who were taken from India to Fiji by dishonest means and the inhumane conditions that befell them.

Netanela Mizrahi (NT) - A new work, initially planned between long-term collaborators, Ms Mizrahi and Mr Gurruwiwi, supported by the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and chorale was to build on duo's success as The Djari Project. In the week prior to the announcement of this commission, Mr Gurruwiwi tragically passed away. That collaboration now becomes an intimate work honouring exchange, loss and regeneration.

Salina Fisher (NZ) - Papatūānuku is a major new work for taonga pūoro and orchestra, in collaboration with Jerome Kavanagh and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and will be performed 24 August. The piece celebrates the unique voices of taonga pūoro and their deep connection with the natural world, honouring Papatūānuku (earth mother) in interaction with imaginative orchestral textures.

Victoria Pham (France/NSW) - An Old Belief is a song cycle composed by Victoria Pham for mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and cellist Daniel Pini. The work will set six of poet Alexander Cigana's poems to music. An Old Belief will be premiered as part of the 2024 European-Australian Chamber Music Festival (EACHmf Festival) in France.

Will Guthrie (France) - The project comprises the creation, recording and presentation of new electro-acoustic works for drums, percussion, field recordings and electronics, under the title People Pleaser Part III. These works will be performed live, and will be presented as Guthrie's first completely electro-acoustic live set, combining live drums / percussion and electronics.