Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Peter Knight  

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

The Art Music Fund, celebrating its ninth funding round, is an initiative of APRA AMCOS, in partnership with the Australian Music Centre and SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music.

The 2024 Art Music Fund recipients are Anna Liebzeit, Cameron Deyell, Christine Pan, Dominik Karski, Emily Sheppard, Eve de Castro-Robinson, James Rushford, Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim, Nathaniel Otley, Peter Knight and Sia Ahmad.

This year's $82,500 total allocation will support a range of fascinating new projects both personal and global in scale. Commissions delve into a range of topics: ecological impacts and ocean sound, 3D sound, Chinese rituals and beliefs, gender identity and faith, and much 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. This year's recipients join an impressive list of composers to benefit from the fund including Liza Lim, Sandy Evans, Eve Klein, Matt Keegan, Nardi Simpson, Hamed Sadeghi and Connor D'Netto.

The successful applicants' compositions demonstrate the high level of creativity, innovation and collaboration across disciplines, genres and formats, while working in a challenging funding landscape.

Sydney-based composer Christine Pan is embarking on 'The Parts We Give', a song-cycle exploring the nuanced presentation of love of an immigrant Chinese family residing in Australia. It will begin its worldwide journey in Western Sydney, with further performances with Blush Opera and the University of New England, and restaged by Tenth Muse Initiative in Perth in 2026. An international premiere is planned for the ACMI Conference in Los Angeles, as well as an interactive presentation by French-based FABLE ARTS.

2024 Art Music Fund recipient Christine Pan (AU):

The Art Music Fund gives a platform for eclectic voices of Australian creatives; to tell important stories and to challenge the boundaries of creative practice while doing so. It is a way to propel Australian music across borders, throughout both local and international spaces and connect with global audiences.

2024 Art Music Fund recipients:

Anna Leibzeit (VIC) - The new music composition weaves into an installation that includes visual elements in five parts: bones, ghosts, bells, bricks, and hair. As a First Nations artist and educator my pedagogical and creative manoeuvre of 'respectful empathy' inspires the music spanning personal and socio-cultural locations.

Cameron Deyell (VIC) - ECHO will be created in an immersive offshore environment, with the ocean as a collaborator. The electro-acoustic work responds to ecological processes and will unfold through a creative development with movement artists at Dancenorth Australia before becoming a live performance work and an instrumental studio-recorded album.

Christine Pan (NSW) - 'The Parts We Give' (TPWG) is a song-cycle of eight songs exploring the nuanced presentation of love of an immigrant Chinese family residing in Australia. For two voices, piano, and electroacoustics, TPWG will be premiered in Western Sydney with further Australian and international performances to follow in 2025-2026.

Dominik Karski (WA) - The work will be scored for two double basses and written for ELISION soloists Kathryn Schulmeister and Rohan Dasika. Indivisibility will essentially be about two similar yet distinct voices striving to attain a state of complete, perfect unity and certainty. The inspiration came from the Planck length (the smallest unit of length in quantum physics).

Emily Sheppard (TAS) - Emily will write a cross-genre suite exploring the wide-ranging myths of sirens. The suite will feature bespoke kelp and eel-skin instruments and marine field recordings, written for the unique sound-world of the Van Diemen's Fiddles.

Eve de Castro-Robinson (NZ) - Earth's eye, for clarinet, violin, viola and cello. The title is from a quote of Thoreau, "A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." It is appropriate, given the physical setting of Wanaka and surroundings, and gives scope to look inward, to create a sonic statement of depth, reflectiveness, and vivid colour.

James Rushford (VIC) - Composing and presenting 'Love Knots', a new work for quarter-tone bass flute, contrabass and Lumatone microtonal keyboard, performed by Rebecca Lane, Jon Heilbron and Rushford. It explores the possibility of '3D' harmony through an innovative score system. It will be performed across Europe and Australia in 2025.

Mindy Meng Wang / Monica Lim (VIC) - Opera for the Dead (OFT) is a multi-artform musical performance for AsiaTOPA 2025, inspired by rituals and beliefs surrounding ancestor worship, death and afterlife in Chinese and Chinese diaspora culture. It combines live music performance, new/digital media and physical installation to create a participatory contemporary experience of grief, reflection and healing process.

Nathaniel Otley (NZ) - this rising tide, these former wetlands will be a new chamber orchestra work for the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and the Southbank Sinfonia that explores the ecological and cultural histories of former wetlands areas in both Aotearoa and the UK; finding and voicing how the echoes of these complex histories continue to resonate today.

Peter Knight (VIC) - Reality Hunger is a suite of compositions for trumpet, electronics, ondes Martenot, and string quartet in collaboration with French ondes Martenot virtuoso, Nadia Ratsimandresy. The compositions will respond to sections of author David Shields' influential work of literary collage, Reality Hunger, and will incorporate electroacoustic techniques, field recording, traditional scoring, and studio practice.

Sia Ahmad (ACT) - I will be working on a song cycle for voice, string quartet and electronics to perform live with The Letter String Quartet (TLSQ). Inspired by contemporary classical, spiritual jazz and modern R'n'B forms, this new work explores the theme of gender identity and faith, directly inspired by my lived experience.