APRA AMCOS Announces 2022 Art Music Fund Recipients

APRA AMCOS, the Australasian body that grants and manages license fees across the music industry, has recently announced the eleven recipients of its Art Music Fund grants.

They are Cat Hope, Corrina Bonshek, Hamed Sadeghi, Kate Milligan, Linda Kouvaras, Maree Sheehan, Paul Clift, Riki Neihana Gooch, Robert Curgenven, Ross McHenry, and Wally Gunn.

Collectively, the composers will receive more than $55,000 worth of funding, which will go towards wide-ranging projects. Some of the topics of the proposed pieces of music include the work of teenage climate activists, Persian Sufism philosophy, a Dutch shipwreck, the Song of Solomon, "iceberg songs," the Māori voice in Morris's "conduction" method, the intricacies of the pipe organ, and more. You can read more about each of the proposed projects here.

Since its inception in 2016, the Art Music Fund has provided more than half a million dollars worth of funding to Australian composers. The Australian Music Centre has partnered with APRA AMCOS for the entirety of that time, but in 2022, the SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music has also come on board.

"Contemporary Art Music is innovative and experimental, and explores the outer edges of musical possibility," said recipient Wally Gunn.

"These innovations and explorations frequently find their way back to popular music, commercial music, and screen music, expanding the vocabulary of musical expression across the board," he added. "Art Music needs funding so that the innovators and experimenters can keep pushing the boundaries, and so that music of all kinds can sound new, exciting, and vital."

"SOUNZ is delighted to have been involved for the first time with APRA AMCOS' Art Music Fund in 2022, especially with the increase of opportunities for New Zealand recipients," said Diana Marsh, the Chief Executive of SOUNZ.

"We are thrilled that the projects selected are from two SOUNZ composers who are working at the leading edge of music practice in Aotearoa New Zealand."