Helen Gifford OAM to receive Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award
PRESS RELEASE:
APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre are proud to announce that composer Helen Gifford OAM will be the recipient of the Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award for 2016. She will receive this prestigious honour at the Art Music Awards on Tuesday 16 August at the Plaza Ballroom in Melbourne.
This special award, which is determined by the APRA Board of Directors, recognises an individual artist who has made a notable contribution to Australian art music.
Born in Hawthorn, Victoria in 1935, Helen Gifford gained a Bachelor of Music at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium in 1958, studying piano with Roy Shepherd and harmony with Dorian Le Gallienne. She won the Dorian Le Gallienne Award in 1965, and a Senior Composer’s Fellowship in 1973.
Between 1970 and 1982 Helen Gifford received regular commissions to write music for Melbourne Theatre Company productions and was appointed composer in residence to the Australian Opera in 1974. A proud modernist with a long and illustrious career, Gifford has written a wide range of compositions, from dramatic works to chamber music, vocal and solo pieces.
In 1996 Helen Gifford was awarded Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) by Monash University. In the same year, she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in recognition of service to music as a composer. Helen has said she ‘Is overwhelmed’ by her impending honour and she will attend the Art Music Awards to receive this special award.
Confirmed as a special guest presenter for the 2016 Art Music Awards is ABC Classic FM’s Mairi Nicolson, whose 30-year love affair with classical music and radio began after she graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, majoring in piano and singing. Mairi can be heard each Monday to Friday afternoon on Classic FM as she explores the lives and careers of people who make music.
Also joining the Art Music Awards as a guest presenter is the distinguished soprano Merlyn Quaife AM. Considered a performer of great versatility, Merlyn received an Order of Australia Award in the Queen’s Birthday 2013 Honours List for significant service to music. Known as the ‘fearless soprano’, Merlyn continues to perform opera, oratorio, Lieder, chamber music and contemporary music to great acclaim throughout Australia and Europe.
Throughout her long and varied career, singer songwriter Katie Noonan has taken audiences on sublime excursions through jazz, pop and classical music. Named earlier this year as the Artistic Director of the Queensland Music Festival, she appears as a presenter for the Art Music Awards, alongside Rupert Myer AO, Chair of the Australia Council. Rupert Myer became a Member of the Order of Australia in January 2005 for service to the arts, for support of museums, galleries, and the community through a range of philanthropic and service organisations. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2015.
Musical curator of the evening, pianist Gabriella Smart has assembled a powerful collection of performances for those attending the 2016 Art Music Awards.
Performing a rendition of Lonely Boy by Aboriginal musician Warren H. Williams will be singer Derik Lynch, soprano Deborah Kayser, saxophonist Derek Pascoe, guitarist Barry Campbell, and dancer and didjeridu player Trevor Jamieson.
Art Music Awards finalist Cathy Milliken’s Red Robin will be performed by the versatile artist Lina Andonovska on piccolo flute. Fellow finalists Speak Percussion will perform an extract of Damien Ricketson’s Rendition Clinic, from their program “Fluorophone”, music that moves between noise, theatrical music, virtuosic instrumentalism in a synesthetic display of light and sound, and feature Anna Camara, Matthias Shack-Arnott and Eugene Ughetti.
Performing an excerpt of Water Pushes Sand will be Awards finalist Erik Griswold along with the Australian Art Orchestra. The performance of this Jazz Work of the Year finalist will also feature Peter Knight, Mindy Wang, Sam Pankhurst and Vanessa Tomlinson.
Kate Neal’s Semaphore (finalist for Instrumental Work of the Year) will be performed by percussionists Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Madi Chwasta, Matthew Horsley, Hamish Upton and dancer Timothy Walsh.
2016 ART MUSIC AWARDS
Tuesday 16 August
Plaza Ballroom, Melbourne
Hosted by Jonathan Biggins
With music performances curated by Gabriella Smart
www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/
Dr Joel Crotty, senior lecturer in musicology at Monash University, will also present at the event. A long-time champion of Australian art music, Joel has had strong ties to the Australian music community for many years – as an academic, media critic, historian and commentator.