Dame Joan Sutherland Set for Posthumous AWMAs Honour (EXCLUSIVE)

Dame Joan Sutherland, the legendary, late soprano, will be posthumously inducted into the Australian Women in Music Awards’ Honour Roll next month, The Music Network can exclusively reveal.

Sutherland will be one of two honourees celebrated during the 2024 AWMAs, presented Wednesday, Oct. 2 at Fortitude Music Hall in Meanjin/Brisbane.

On the night, First Nations soprano Nina Korbe will perform a tribute Dame Joan, TMN understands.

With her presence and astonishing vocal talents, Sutherland was a superstar of opera, waving the flag for her homeland like no other.

Born in Sydney, Sutherland was the first Australian to win a Grammy Award, doing so in in 1962 for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist (with or without orchestra) and was known as La Stupenda, Italian for “The Stupendous One”.

Passing in 2010, she is regarded as one of the greatest sopranos of all time, a peerless talent who mentored the great Luciano Pavarotti, and led the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s to the 1980s.

Among her scores of awards, Sutherland received a Kennedy Center Honor for her outstanding achievement throughout her career and she was a member of the first class of ARIA Hall of Fame inductees, in 1988.

Sarah McLeod and Nina Korbe

The fifth annual AWMAs recognises “the vast contributions of women across the sector,” reads a statement, and shines a light on female First Nations and culturally diverse artists, artists with disability, behind-the-scenes experts and music professionals.

As previously reported, finalists in 19 categories this year include Kasey Chambers, Alice Ivy, Deborah Conway and Katie Noonan. 

The AWMAs caps a two-day program — the 2024 Australian Women in Music Conference, featuring Kate Jenkins AO, former Sex Discrimination Commissioner and inaugural Chair of the Creative Workplaces, in conversation with Alex Shehadie.

Kate Jenkins

Jenkins will participate in a frank discussion with Shehadie, a gender equality expert, exploring her career highlights and challenges, the people who have inspired her and lessons learnt about making change.

Also, Jenkins will facilitate a special panel, Brothers For the Sisterhood, featuring speakers Paul “Browny” Brown (CEO Wall of Sound), Will Pawa – Oui (Pawa Haus Creative), Brian “Smash” Chladil (CEO Oztix) and John Watson (president, John Watson Management & Eleven: A Music Company).

Diversity, equality and inclusion are key themes for the conference, which will be presented for the first time at the Queensland Multicultural Centre, Kangaroo Point.

Across the daytime agenda, the AWMAs will continues the push for gender equality to be adopted as a core music industry value, comments AWMA executive producer and program director Vicki Gordon.

“The Australian music industry is a vast and complex eco-system which sadly in 2024 continues to promote festival line-ups dominated, sometimes entirely by male artists, male musicians, male techs and male led bands,” says Gordon.

Alex Shehadie

“The flow-on effect is reflected in the glaring absence of women working as operators and designers in front-of-house audio and lighting, as mixing engineers and in other technical areas, backstage as roadies and behind the scenes.”

The Australian Women in Music Awards & Conference Program 2024 is available here.

Tickets to the Conference and First Nations Women’s Music Program are on sale at Oztix.

Australian Women in Music Awards is supported by the Queensland Government.