Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Catherine Haridy  

I hope you are thriving as we make our way to the end of 2024. It has been a year full of swings and roundabouts for our music community, and our hope and aspiration is for a harmonious new year for all.

This year, we saw a marked increase in the cost of living, which has affected the cost of services and materials impacting the AMC and our broader community. Despite these challenges, we are committed to providing an affordable service as we continually look to improve with high quality outcomes within our resourcing.

The implementation of Revive, our new national cultural policy with a final piece of legislation passed in Parliament in July this year, was a significant event. The Creative Australia Amendment (Implementation of Revive) Bill 2024 established all functions of Creative Australia, and with this, the inaugural year of Music Australia. I'm grateful to be able to participate in the Music Australia Advisory Council as of November this year, and to see funding opportunities for art music creators across both Creative Australia and Music Australia available to all.

Within the AMC, we implemented an updated, modern Constitution which resulted from a 12-month review led by the Chair of our Audit, Finance & Governance Committee, Tracy Morgan and AMC Chair, Marshall McGuire. The process involved member, artist, and team consultations and provided us with a sound governance framework for our organisation's future. We delivered partnerships and events such as the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address, MOMENTUM Commissions, members' events, and the annual Art Music Awards in conjunction with APRA AMCOS. We worked with the Department of Local Government, Sport and Creative Industries in WA to share our First Nations Cultural Policy to close to 200 people across 10 in-person and virtual sessions. We published over 35 Resonate articles and connected with many of you through our social media channels. We provided new professional development opportunities through our Surrounding Sound online sessions and onboarded over 40 Associate Artists to AMC representation.

In the past year, we collected and distributed just over $70,000 in royalties from score hires, purchases and recording sales, demonstrating the importance of the non-exclusive commercial services we offer for represented artists, and publishing and label partners.

We've also been animating our living collection of music through new education resources, providing tools to explore and teach Australian repertoire in the classroom. 30 works have been featured in 9 education resource kits, and since the establishment of our Music Education Specialist role, 300 copies of these resources have found a new place in schools' and teachers' toolkits nationwide.

Our international perspective illuminates the challenges that Australian creators face in export and engagement, which we share with our partners and global counterparts. This year, I had the pleasure of travelling to London, Berlin (for Classical:NEXT), and Nijmegen (for Music Meetings conference and festival). It was a pleasure to meet some of our wonderful represented artists, participate in panel discussions on First Nations ICIP and Australian art music and see several incredibly inspiring performances including Liza Lim's UK premiere of String Creatures with JACK Quartet at Wigmore Hall and Xani Kolac's oustanding Classical:NEXT showcase performance at Kater Blau. Further, I had the pleasure of accompanying our 2024 Classical:NEXT Fellows, Louise Devenish and Xani Kolac, to meet their mentors at Pierre Boulaz Saal, and work closely with Sounds Australia to deliver and participate in a speed networking session.

With AMC represented artist Cathy Milliken in Berlin.	With AMC represented artist John Carmichael in London.
With Classical:NEXT Fellows Xani Kolac ans Louise Devenish	With the Classical:NEXT Australian delegation at the Australian Embassy in Berlin.

Recently, I've had the honour of being appointed to the Board of IAMIC (International Association of Music Centres). This, along with our close partnership with Sounds Australia across Classical:NEXT, jazzahead!, and other international events, will continue to elevate our unique creative perspective into the future.

All this, in parallel with the development of our new website platform, which is progressing in the right direction, and our commitment to sharing your stories, will propel us forward into an evolving technological landscape.

Looking forward, the AMC will be celebrating our 50th year anniversary of operations in 2025!

As part of these celebrations, for the first time, we are taking a leap forward from our online webinar series to host a full-day professional development conference, Surrounding Sound: Level Up Day, supported by Sound NSW. Also for the first time, we will support the recording of Australian orchestral works through MOMENTUM Plus: a new opportunity supported by Music Australia which looks to address the huge gaps in access to audio recordings for composers of large-scale works.

Returning in 2025 are the triennial Paul Lowin Orchestral and Song Cycle Prizes with Perpetual, the annual Art Music Awards co-presented with APRA AMCOS, the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address, and MOMENTUM Commissions continuing to propel the creation of new works.

We look forward to sharing this milestone year with all our artists, members, and donors, who have supported the AMC through the course of our history. You are all crucial in enabling the work that we do. It is because of our shared passion and ambition to take Australian music to new heights that these opportunities are possible. Thank you for being a part of that journey and I hope that together we can continue an evolving and meaningful legacy for Australian music.

Catherine Haridy
CEO