Funding Brave New Works That Will Live On

For the fourth consecutive year, Australian and New Zealand art music composers are encouraged to apply for a share in A$100,000 worth of funding to create new commissioned work thanks to the APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund.

The funding pool of A$100,000 is available for the creation of commissioned work that is innovative, displays professional compositional craft and represents a benchmark of excellence in its field. The intention is to support composers to create works with a long artistic life.

The fund has supported groundbreaking and innovative works by composers from a range of disciplines, from improvisational jazz to multi-media sound art, and from children’s opera to major orchestral works.

In the past year, funded works that came to fruition include Liza Lim’s Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (world premiere in Witten, Germany), Eve Klein’s critically-acclaimed operatic Vocal Womb (world premiere at MOFO at MONA), and Matt Keegan’s The Three Seas project, a collaboration of Australian jazz and West Bengali folk musicians, which had its world premiere at Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues and will be performed throughout India in December.

Speak Percussion’s Eugene Ughetti’s funded work Polar Force receives its world premiere 24 November at Arts Centre Melbourne, with performances through 1 December. Ughetti’s work uses field recordings from the Australian Antarctic to create an immersive sound and percussion experience.

Ughetti says, “The Art Music Fund has quickly garnered the reputation as one of Australia’s most important commissioning funds for Art Music. It has undoubtedly resulted in the creation and support of many new significant new works. In many instances, these works are pillars around which Australian musicians and arts workers forge their careers and collaboratively drive the significance of art music within Australian culture.”

APRA AMCOS’ Head of Member Services Jana Gibson says, “We’re very proud of the Art Music Fund and the vital role it has played in supporting composers bring new works to life – works that then go on to be programmed and performed in venues, concert halls and festivals in Australia, New Zealand and around the world. The creation of new works is beneficial for the entire art music ecosystem.”

What: APRA/AMCOS Art Music Found

When: Applications Now Open & Close 20 February 

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