Ten art music composers have been awarded grants for new projects
The Art Music Fund has distributed $500,000 in five years
Applications are assessed on the viability of the proposed project, the quality of the work, and the strategy for the life work.
Ten Australian composers are the recipients of the APRA AMCOS and Australian Music Centre's Art Music Fund, taking the grant's all-time funding total to more than $500,000 in five years.
This year's $100,000 allocation will support a range of brave new projects as they come to life - from urban art installations, to video and sound works to acapella collaboration.
The 2020 Art Music Fund recipients are Kristin Berardi, Leah Blankendaal, Olivia Davies, Aviva Endean, Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey, Thomas Meadowcroft, Maria Moles, Jodi Rose and Jon Rose.
Art Music Fund applications were assessed on the viability of the proposed project, the quality of the work, and the strategy for the life and reach of the work.
The successful applicants’ compositions demonstrate the high-level creativity, innovation and collaboration happening in the sector, which is more important than ever to fund.
Jana Gibson, Head of Member Services, APRA AMCOS:
"As working conditions for our members are changing dramatically on a global scale, we’re pleased to provide some certainty to support the creation of new work this year through the Art Music Fund. An incredible selection of compositions have been identified reflecting a diverse range of talented composers and themes. We look forward to experiencing the stories they’ll share with us at the completion of these projects.”
John Davis, CEO of the Australian Music Centre:
"Diversity of creative practice is a strong feature of the recipients in the 2020 Art Music Fund round, from notated practice to installation, from technology-based sound to the environment. At this time of crisis, all these works reach out to not only reflect contemporary concerns, but they also define a future for how art music can meaningfully connect in new contexts. The Australian Music Centre is proud to partner with APRA AMCOS in this important initiative, and is very grateful for their commitment to it."
2020 Art Music Fund recipient Olivia Davies:
"Considering how much we rely on the arts, particularly now, it’s important to acknowledge how important it is for such grants to be available. It’s never just about the individual, there is always a network of people involved in some way, or a community for which the project aims to reach and benefit.
"Artists will always create, but we need the support so we can share it."
Davies has interstate and international plans for 'Gradient', a 6-hour immersive audiovisual installation.
The past year has seen previous recipients’ funded compositions come to fruition including the world premieres of:
| Composer | Location | Funded project |
|---|---|---|
| Kristin Berardi | QLD | The Art Music Fund will allow Kristin to write four pieces, which will be the beginning of a project featuring her compositions and singing, extending from jazz into a more singer-songwriter zone |
| Leah Blankendaal | SA | Leah will develop a new work for US group Quince Ensemble. Quince are an a cappella group of four treble voices who specialise in new music. This work will examine the movement of bodies through time and how memory is written on, and therefore transforms, the skin. |
| Olivia Davies | WA | 'Gradient', is a 6-hour immersive audiovisual installation featuring hour-long cycles of electroacoustic sound, emerging photographic projections and a live solo double-bell trumpet performer, creating an immersive and contemplative space in which audience members may sit or roam freely. |
| Aviva Endean | VIC | ‘Stranger’ in a major new composition which will develop the use of video as score, and explore its potential for audience engagement. Video is a powerful tool that I have used as a score for audience engagement in two previous short works: ‘A Face Like Yours’ and ‘Song Invitation: Lullaby’. |
| Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey | VIC | 'Witness Stand' is an audio reckoning with site. We sit and pay attention to the here and now, and through a temporal reflection in sound, to the past and future journey of a place and her listeners. 'Witness Stand' as a sound installation places an audience on a series of custom-built seating tiers across a city. |
| Thomas Meadowcroft | Berlin/QLD | Thomas will compose a concert length piece of chamber music for the piano-percussion quartet, 'Yarn/Wire', to be premiered at New York’s renowned Miller Theater as part of their 2020-1 season. Employing a variety of electronic media, the new work explores the archiving of 'muzak' in real time, as well as the temporal conundrum of 'muzak'; namely, it 'goes on forever'. |
| Maria Moles | VIC | Maria's project comprises the creation, presentation and recording of an electroacoustic work that explores combinations of percussion, live processing and electronics (synthesizer, tape loops, and manipulation through the use of time/pitch shifters and filters), inspired by compositional techniques of traditional Kulintang music of the Philippines. |
| Jodi Rose | NSW/Berlin | The 'Global Bridge Symphony' is an evolving composition of bridges around the world, their sounds resonating through the structures, connecting audiences and bridges in a shared listening experience. |
| Jon Rose | NSW | Night Song: Alice Springs’ is a new innovative interspecies work that situates itself between a performance, an installation, and a giant contrapuntal morning chorus - a compression of time and geography into a one-hour sonic experience. |