Nigel Butterley to Be Posthumously Honoured at Art Music Awards

Nigel Butterley will posthumously receive the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the 2022 Art Music Awards.

Butterley was a composer, teacher, broadcaster, pianist and highly decorated musician.

He died in February this year, aged 86, after a long illness.

During his career, Butterley won prizes including the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award, the Don Banks Music Award, the Paul Lowin Orchestral Prize, an Art Music Award and an Order of Australia.

In his time as a broadcaster on ABC Radio, he was a staunch advocate for new music not previously heard in Australia.

By 1973, he had been commissioned to compose a work to celebrate the opening of the Sydney Opera House, creating “Fire in the Heavens”.

The Art Music Awards will also feature five live performances, curated by musical director Barney McAll.

The performances include one from Gian Slater and Invenio Singers, another from Helen Svoboda with Erik Griswold, Joseph O’Connor, Audrey Powne and Andrew Saragossi. Violin and piano duo Andrew Haveron and Simon Tedeschi will also take to the stage, as will Baroque recorder and harpsichord duo Hannah Coleman and Donald Nicolson. Butchulla songman Fred Leone with experimental contrabassist Samuel Pankhurst, Ritchie Daniell and Charlotte Jacke will round out the performances.

The Awards will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 31 in Melbourne.

APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre said the organisations are looking forward to hosting the first live, in-person ceremony in two years.