Eleven Australian and New Zealand composers have each received a grant of $7.500 towards the commissioning of a new work.

The two thousand twenty-three 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. Working in a multitude of different musical styles song-cycles to orchestral works to electronic music, the recipients will be engaged in in a wide spectrum of globe-spanning collaborations and intercultural music-making practices.

Presented by APRA AMCOS in partnership with the Australian Music Centre and New Zealand’s SOUNZ, the grant has seen an increase $5.000 in two thousand twenty-second; this the second year of the Art Music Fund’s partnership with SOUNZ.

Both D’Netto and Endean get their second Art Music Fund grant in this round. The fund supports a variety of different musical ventures, including notated composition, electroacoustic music, sound art, theatrical and operatic music, music for dance and more. Recipient Victoria Pham, a recipient NSW, is “particularly grateful” to the fund for its support of experimental art music, offering support for a “vibrantly diverse collection of works to breathe into music.”

2023 Art Music Fund Recipients

Andrew Ford (NSW)
Ford will make up a piece for treble voices and electric guitar for Luminescence Children’s Choir, the Flanders Boys Choir, the Estonian TV Girls’ Choir and other vocal groups. Titled I Sing the Birth, the work explores a Christmas tradition that spans the fifteenth cent until the modern day.

Aviva Endean (VIC)
The Cloud Maker is a collaboration that premiered in two thousand-nineteenth. This grant allows this project to expand into a concert-length piece, platforming intercultural connection, improvisation and the goddess stories Maori, Korean, Nordic, Jewish, Celtic and Filipino cultures.

Brooke Green (NSW)
Green will make up a new work for baroque violin, bass viol and harpsichord for Irish harpsichordist, Yonit Kosovkse. Her work will tell the legend of her third great-mother who was sent to Australia Limerick for the crime of stealing calico.

Connor D’Netto (QLD)
Australian writer and playwright Maeve Marsden’s ‘Queerstories’ is a project that collects and tells tales the LGBTQI community around Australia. D’Netto will adapt some of these stories into a new song-cycle, for eight voices and piano.

Elizabeth Jigalin (NSW)
Written for five Australian and international percussion and flute duos, ‘Earbuds’ is a five-movement work that incorporates the artistic flair of each ensemble into the work; with an emphasis on experimental and living music practices.

Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung (VIC)
Using the Chinese musical instruments, pre-recorded material and artefacts kept by Bendigo’s Golden Dragon Mum, Leung will lead a collaboration that speculates a Chinese-Australian sonic history.

Nadia Freeman (NZ)
An intriguing mix of electronic instrumental music, live sampling, song and theatre honours Freeman’s ancestors; presenting the relatively unknown history of 60.000 Indian indentured labourers who were taken to Fiji and suffered below inhumane conditions.

Netanela Mizrahi (NT)
This work was intended to be another department of a long-term collaboration between Mizrahi and Yolngu musician Mister Gurruwiwi, who sadly passed far shortly before the announcement of this grant. Working with the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and chorale, this project presently becomes a work of honouring exchange, loss and regeneration.

Salina Fisher (NZ)
Named after the earth mother, Papatūānuku is a work for orchestra and traditional Maori instruments taonga pūoro. Written in collaboration with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Māori instrument specialist and performer Jerome Kavanagh, it celebrates these instrument’s connection with the natural world and their unique voices.

Victoria Pham (France/NSW)
To be premiered at the two thousand twenty-four European-Australian Chamber Music Festival, Pham will make up a song cycle, An Elderly Belief, setting six poems of Alexander Cigana to music. It'll be performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and cellist Daniel Pini.

Will Guthrie (France)
Guthrie will , record and present his first totally electro-acoustic live set, mixing live drums and percussion with field recordings and electronics. It'll be titled People Pleaser Portion III.