7 January 2025
Padma Newsome receives the 2024 Albert H. Maggs Award
Image: Padma Newsome Padma Newsome is the latest composer to receive the highly coveted Albert H. Maggs Composition Award, presented by the University of Melbourne, for his work The French Violin.
Premiered by the Adelaide Baroque Orchestra in 2022, The French Violin was influenced by the events of the 2019-20 Australian bushfire crisis. Based in Mallacoota, Victoria, along the edge of the Karbeethong forest, the Black Summer fires ripped close to Padma's home.
Earlier that year, he was entrusted with a number of broken violins, including one made by Didier Nicolas around 1820 in Mirecourt, the French capital of violin-making. After working closely with a luthier, the restored instrument undertook a unique character, settling most comfortably in baroque pitch.
Although The French Violin is deeply shaped by these two events, Padma says the work is more about storytelling, rather than an exploration of the instrument's sounds or his local post-fire landscape.
The work was recognised for its innovative blend of old and new, fit for the period instruments it is written for, while sounding fresh, modern, and Australian.
The Albert H. Maggs Composition Award is provided as a commission for Australian composers to create a new musical work of a substantial nature, valued at $20,000, including a performance subsidy.
Previous recipients of the Albert H. Maggs Award include Aristea
Mellos, Connor
D'Netto, Anne
Cawrse, Nigel
Westlake.
See all previous recipients of the Albert H. Maggs Award.
© Australian Music Centre (2025) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to reproduce this article either online or in print.
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