$30,000 + $2,500 (including GST) Qantas voucher
The Outstanding Musicians Award 2016 will be awarded to a Victorian musician, or group for recent work representing an outstanding example of creativity and skill.
ALL music genres are eligible for this Award.
Supported by Dr. Ron Benson
Lior Attar
Entered music — Compassion
Compassion is a song cycle for voice and orchestra written and performed by Lior together with Nigel Westlake. It consists of ancient Hebrew and Arabic texts centred around the idea of compassion.
The work is made up of seven movements of original melodies and orchestrations set to a collection of poems and proverbs drawn from the rich worlds of Judaism and Islam, which offer us an insight into the wisdom of compassion and how we should treat one another. Their similarities are immense and their universality is undeniable.
Biography
Lior is one of Australia’s most cherished singer / songwriters, renowned for his beautiful voice and songs that radiate truth and sincerity. His debut album ‘Autumn Flow’ became one of the most successful independent releases in Australian music history. Lior has since released several albums and has embarked on various collaborations, most notably Compassion.
Briggs
Entered music — The Children Came Back
The Children Came Back advances the story and pays homage to They Took The Children Away. Archie Roach AM released the song 25 years ago from the seminal album ‘Charcoal Lane’ and it’s with his blessings, this new sequel of a song is released to champion black excellence and remind us of the amazing things achieved since.
Jimmy Little, Adam Goodes, Lionel Rose and Patty Mills are just some of the greats referenced within this almighty shout-out by Briggs.
Biography
Briggs, the powerhouse rapper / Bad Apples Music CEO whose records have made him a pioneer of Australian hip-hop and whose outspoken critiques of Australian culture have given a voice to a marginalised population. Whether on your TV in ABC’s Cleverman or on your turntable with his critically hailed albums.
Photo credit: Paul Philipson
Sophia Brous
Entered music — Mama Zaman/Ru U Ru
Mama Zaman/Ru U Ru is an original work composed and performed by Sophia Brous with British musicians Leo Abrahams and David Coulter. Drawn from half-spoken texts of two Eritrean lullaby chants, the piece is taken from the extended song cycle Lullaby Movement, a theatrical musical performance work created by Brous since 2015 exploring lullaby ritual from around the world.
Performed in over 20 languages, Brous developed the song cycle in a series of commissioned phases where she learned lullabies from migrant and refugee communities around the world, working with organisations including the Refugee Council UK, The Watermill Center, Urbantheatre Projects, The Hutto Project Berlin and Good Chance Calais in the Jungle refugee camp.
Biography
Sophia Brous is a vocalist and musician, curator and artistic director. She works and collaborates with companies and artists internationally, including recent engagements with The Barbican, Paris Philharmonie, Southbank Centre and Red Bull Studios New York. She has worked with David Byrne, Julia Holter, BBC Orchestra, Questlove, Sean Lennon and Kimbra. In 2016, Brous is artist-in-resident of National Sawdust New York, The Watermill Center, and Artistic Associate of Arts Centre Melbourne.
Photo credit: Darren Sylvester
Biddy Connor
Entered music — Same But Swallowed
Same But Swallowed was recorded live in The Oratory, Abbotsford Convent on Sunday June 28th, 2016 by James Cecil.
It is part of the ‘Oculus Sonic’ Song Cycle, written about the various in habitants of The Abbotsford Convent and the area that it is built on. The feature vocalist is Marita Dyson from The Orbweavers and members of the quartet provide the extra vocal harmonies.
This song cycle was written in collaboration with lyricist Maria Zajkowski in 2015 with the assistance of a Spiritous Award from The Abbotsford Convent Foundation.
Biography
Biddy Connor, founding member of The Letter String Quartet, has composed, arranged and performed for a range projects including film, television, theatre and large-scale community events. Biddy has worked with local and international artists including Laura Jean, Winged Victory for The Sullen, Jherek Bischoff, Jen Cloher and John Cale.
Photo credit: Chung Fu
James Hullick
Entered music — Rotation Post-Sapien
Rotation Post-Sapien, composed and performed by James, is a Herculean 60-minute solo work, combining prepared piano, voice, percussion and synthesizers.
Deeply informed by James’ research into communities, Rotation Post-Sapien maps out a trajectory of human to posthuman sonic evolution.
Premiered at BIFEM 2015 the work attained archetypal expression: “Stripped of shock value, prepared piano and electronics – as well as sound art – gain the capacity to become more emotive, completing their rotation from something alien to overwhelmingly human. With Rotation Post-Sapien, Hullick combines and re-invents musical relics from different periods in a ritualistic exploration of human emotion.”
(Reviewed: ‘Partial Durations’ 2015.)
Biography
James Hullick is a pianist, sound artist and composer at the forefront of auditory creation. He has composed and performed internationally for over two decades; and often with The Amplified Elephants (Footscray Community Arts Centre). A 2015 Australia Council Fellow, James is a Harvey Piano Scholar 2015-16, a Visiting Fellow at CiART RMIT and Director of JOLT Arts.
Gareth Liddiard
Entered music — Feelin Kinda Free (The Drones)
“The best songs are like bad dreams”
Feelin Kinda Free explores themes such as koro syndrome, the fruits of western imperialism, ISIS, celebrity chefs, seaside statecraft, beachbum race riots, Rupert Murdoch, the new middle eastern/european diaspora, the spectre of neofascism, Hugo Boss, Luftwaffe psychological warfare techniques, girls, sweet revenge, capitalist consumer psychosis, body image dysmorphia/ mania, Gertrude Bell, eating people and selling yourself, having great skin, leftist utopianism, scientific triumphalism, E.T. and the mindless assumption that alien lifeforms would be nicer than us simply because of their technological superiority.
Biography
Gareth Liddiard moved to Melbourne from Perth in 2000, where he has recorded eight albums, both with his band The Drones and solo. He has spent the last sixteen years touring Australia and the rest of the world.
Kate Miller-Heidke
Entered music — Excerpts From The Rabbits And Other Recent Recordings
This medley features two songs from Kate’s opera The Rabbits - Where? (a live acoustic version with Iain Grandage on piano) and My Sky (from the live cast recording album) - along with two new songs performed with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra - You’ve Underestimated Me, Dude and Elysian Fields - and two songs from Kate’s latest album: Rock This Baby To Sleep (a capella with multi-track vocals by Kate as backing) and O Vertigo!, which has been described variously as sounding like a yodelling ambulance or Enya on crystal meth.
Biography
Kate Miller-Heidke is an independent, awardwinning singer-songwriter who lives between the worlds of contemporary pop and classical music. She has released four studio albums to great acclaim. Trained as a classical singer, Kate has performed for the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the English National Opera. Her debut opera as a composer, The Rabbits, won four Helpmann Awards including Best Score and Best New Australian Work.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Entered music — People-Vultures
Our blue planet is parched and cracks are forming underfoot and the sweat drips from our collective temple onto the P sand and a feathered doom encircles us from above and there’s a pulsing in our breast telling us there ain’t nothing any mere mortal can do when the sun retreats and blackness sets in. Call upon God to deliver us from our peril.
Biography
Although they formed in 2011 in Melbourne, Australia, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s sense of unfettered sonic exploration makes them easy to mistake for a long-forgotten relic of the psych explosion of the ‘60s. With a far-out sound that, at times, feels barely held together, the band evoke the eclectic rock experimentation of Frank Zappa’s early work with the Mothers of Invention as they follow their musical flights of fancy wherever they might go, and let the rest just fall into place on its own.
Photo credit: Belinda Strodder
PLEXUS
Entered music — Debugeti from The Lyrebird in my Piano by Richard Grantham
Written for PLEXUS and premiered by them in 2014, this work takes as its inspiration the extraordinary talents for mimicry of the Superb Lyrebirds, who imitate musical tunes with ease, and sometimes even combine two tunes into a hybrid melody of their own.
The work’s movements are each a hybrid of the styles of two composers, including Satók (Satie x Bartók), Reichemitsu (Reich x Takemitsu), and the finale Debugeti (Debussy x Ligeti) which, according to Grantham, “starts with an unmistakable French lightness, occasionally tangling the texture by mixing a bit too much unmistakable French lightness in at once.”
Biography
Melbourne ensemble PLEXUS brings together the talents of three of Melbourne’s most vibrant and versatile musicians, who together are devoted to supporting and engaging an ever-growing network of exceptional artists across a variety of disciplines. Since launching in 2014, PLEXUS has commissioned over 100 works and given 65 world premieres.
Scott Tinkler – Winner
Entered music — WHALE
Extending from his acclaimed 2006 Solo recording on the Extreme label, BACKWARDS, and bringing together years of study of Indian Karnatic music and Korean music, Scott Tinkler’s new solo project is exploring rhythm and sound in a highly energetic and exposed environment.
With the use a foot pedal percussion, akin to a one man band, Tinkler sets up pulses to be explored anddeveloped with intense creativity and power. Triggering acoustic resonance in cymbals, using a bucket of water as a device to decontextualise trumpet, Tinkler stretches the world of solo trumpet to new areas of expression and sound.
Biography
Scott Tinkler has been a leading musician, improviser and composer for over three decades. In his own playing, he uses his trumpet to find new effects, colours and techniques, and through collaboration he presents performances which explore the musics of other cultures, and new ways to connect through improvisation.