Development Award 2016

$16,000 – comprising $10,000 cash + $6,000 Yamaha Music Australia grant

The Development Award 2016 will be awarded to an early career musician or group of musicians, 30 years of age and under, who demonstrate outstanding musical talent and the potential to develop their professional career.

ALL music genres are eligible for this Award.

The cash component is supported by The William Buckland Foundation. The music instrument and equipment grant is supported by Yamaha Music Australia Pty Ltd.

The William Buckland Foundation

Yamaha


Sophia Exiner

Photo credit: Louisa Stickelbruck

Sophia Exiner

Entered compositionHeartstrings

On her long-awaited debut album ‘The Ocean of Everything’, beguiling art-pop melodist Phia searches for home and finds her sound. Luscious layers of harmonies, rambunctious vocal percussion and vivid pop sensibilities collide with raw and affecting lyricism to create a remarkably self-assured and genredefying listening experience.

Phia weaves a patchwork landscape of imagery, memories and reflections as she searched for her identity in her new home of Europe, which was also the home of her ancestors. Melodically and rhythmically complex, yet brimming with accessible pop hooks, Phia’s inspired arrangements border on the orchestral, revealing a luminous creative spark.

Heartstrings is the opening track of ‘The Ocean of Everything’.

Biography

Sophia Exiner, also known as Phia, grew up in Melbourne, Australia and graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with an honours degree in improvisation. In 2011 she bought a one-way ticket to Berlin, playing 100s of shows, from bars in Southern Italy to fisherman’s villages in Iceland as well as international festivals in Germany and Poland. Sophia plays the kalimba, an instrument she has made her own through her unique use of it through effect pedals and loops.

listentophia.com

Rory Burnside / Rudely Interrupted

Rory Burnside / Rudely Interrupted

Entered compositionLove You Till I Die

Love You Till I Die is a song about feeling the loss of love and being forgiven. It’s about the eternal struggle to find true love and companionship, making some bad decisions and being forgiven. It’s a song about learning from experience’s, making mistakes and finding forgiveness from those we love. Once we love we always have a special place in our hearts for those we loved and we openly or secretly love them till we die.

Over 50 years on Joe Camilleri has proven that he is a man who loves and lives music.

Biography

Rory Burnside has been writing and performing with his indie rock act Rudely Interrupted since conception in 2006. Rory and Rudely Interrupted have toured our homeland many times and represented Australia internationally 13 times across 9 different countries in the last 10 years including USA, Italy, Germany, China, Canada, UK, New Zealand and Singapore.

rudelyinterrupted.com

Rory Burnside / Rudely Interrupted

Gabriella Cohen

Photo credit: Daniel Ogilvie

Gabriella Cohen

Entered compositionFull Closure and No Details

Full Closure is a definitional labour of love: when Cohen talks about her collaborators she sounds like she’s talking about her family – her bass player and backing singers, ring-ins that recorded after Cohen and Dillon finished up in the country, are “dear friends”; and Dillon is her “sister”. The songs were written on Cohen’s grandpa’s nylon string guitar, and Piano Song was recorded on Dillon’s parents’ old, out-of-tune upright, the same piano she learned on as a child.

Biography

Talking about Gabriella Cohen requires a new adjective: when she tells you about a guitar tone she likes, an organ sound she’s looking for, or the opening bars of The Velvet Underground’s ‘I Found a Reason’, she might tell you these things sound ‘pink’. She’s not describing a synesthetic or aesthetic connection with the colour — instead, it’s an adjective she’s coined, all her own. Luckily, after a spin through Cohen’s debut album Full Closure and No Details, we’ll all know what ‘pink’ sounds like: it sounds like this. It sounds like heartbreak and reckless abandon, like quiet reflection and raucous teamwork.

remotecontrolrecords.lnk.to/ GabriellaCohen

Matthias Schack-Arnott

Matthias Schack-Arnott – Winner

Entered compositionMapping the interior: In search of the inland sea

Key elements of the work are the distortion of breath through aerophones, subtly phasing pulsation patterns and the use of microtonally shifting metals.

In keeping with the 3-channel film of the same name by Drew Pettifer that it was composed for, the work texturally seeks to evoke arid landscapes, crackling heat and warped perspectives. Bass drums are played layered with strewn material – sand, pebbles, debris – to create granular tapestries. Unstable pitch motifs are played on resonant metals as they are submerged in water. Aerophones create beating patterns through alternating 3-note microtonal chords, mirroring the triptych presentation of the original video-work.

Biography

Matthias Schack-Arnott is a percussive artist working in contemporary classical and experimental music as a performer, composer and improviser. He maintains an internationally active career, creating his own solo projects, performing as key artist in Speak Percussion, and appearing as a guest artist with diverse ensembles and orchestras.

matthiasschackarnott.com

Matthias Schack-Arnott
Tilman Robinson

Tilman Robinson

Entered compositionOrison

Orison is a Middle English word for prayer. As an atheist I have had little call for prayer in my life but as our civilisation’s survival teeters on a knife’s edge and people around the world continue to be oppressed and killed I offer this wordless hymn.

Orison is not prayer-like, it is a shriek into the dark; the howl of anguish so many feel but can’t articulate. This version of Orison was recorded at Greenhouse Studios in Iceland and is featured on my recent album ‘Deer Heart’ released through Hobbledehoy Record Co.

Biography

Tilman Robinson is an Australian composer, producer and sound designer. Tilman creates electro-acoustic music across a range of genres including classical minimalism, improvised, experimental, electronic and ambient. Academy trained in the fields of both classical and jazz composition, Tilman’s diverse output focuses on the psychological impact of sound.

tilmanrobinson.com