Sutherland Music Club | music | Sutherland Shire, NSW, Australia

Youth Music Awards 2026 Composition Themes Announced!

The Banksia Award is for ages 13 to 18 years - The theme is "City Life"

The Waratah Award is for ages 19 to 21 years - The theme is "Landscapes"

*see Rules for further information on eligibility

Cash prizes for the two sections will amount to $4200 altogether, including special prizes to Singer-Songwriter entries and first-time entrants

Enquiries: YMAComposition@gmail.com

The Banksia Award Adjudicator: Andrew Ford

Andrew Ford is a composer, writer and broadcaster whose music has won awards including the Paul Lowin Prize for the song cycle, Learning to Howl, a Green Room Award for the opera, Rembrandt’s Wife and the Albert H Maggs Prize for the large ensemble piece, Rauha. His music has been programmed by all the major Australian orchestras and festivals, and performed around the world by the likes of the London Sinfonietta, Hong Kong Sinfonietta and Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the Shanghai, New Zealand, Australian, Flinders and Brodsky quartets, the Song Company, Luminescence Chamber Singers and Flanders Boys Choir; by pianists Peter Donohoe, Lisa Moore and Ian Munro, and singers as various as Lyndon Terracini, Yvonne Kenny, Katie Noonan, Iva Bittová, Jane Sheldon, Jess Hitchcock and Robyn Archer. Since 2020, his Red Dirt Hymns have been widely taken up by singers and choirs.

Ford has been composer-in-residence for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. In 2014 he was Poynter Fellow and visiting composer at Yale University, in 2015 visiting lecturer at Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and in 2018 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University.

Besides his work as a composer, Ford has written widely on all manner of music and published eleven books, most recently The Shortest History of Music (Black Inc., July 2024). He has written, presented and co-produced five radio series for the ABC and, since 1995, presented The Music Show each weekend on ABC Radio National. Ford’s work as writer and broadcaster was recognised in 1998 with the Geraldine Pascall Prize for critical writing, and in 2021 a Sidney Myer Facilitator’s Prize.

He was awarded an OAM in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to music composition and as an author and radio broadcaster.

The shortest history of Andre In Conversation 03 Dec 2025Andrew Ford OAM

00:00 / 59:38

In this conversation, Andrew reflects on discovering composition as a teenager and how an encounter with Michael Tippett shaped his artistic outlook. He discusses balancing technique with intuition, the magic of hearing a work for the first time, and accepting that self-criticism and the realities of needing to finish a work are part of the creative process...

The Waratah Award Adjudicator: Wendy Hiscocks

Wendy Hiscocks is an Australian-born composer-pianist now based in the UK whose music has been commissioned and performed by major international artists such as Piers Lane and Roy Howat (piano), Rachel Nicholls and Elizabeth Connell (soprano), Madeleine Mitchell and Philippa Mo (violin), Michael Collins (clarinet), Sydney Chamber Choir, and the Schubert
Ensemble (London). Festivals programming her works include the Amadeus (Geneva), the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and the Kusatsu International Summer Festival (Japan),
as well as broadcasts on Radio Suisse Romande, Radio France, ABC Radio and TV, BBC Radio 3, and collaborations with the British Film Institute as composer and silent film pianist.

As a pianist, Wendy has performed at venues ranging from London’s Purcell Room to the Kusatsu International Summer Academy and Festival in Japan. She has recorded duo and duet works by Chabrier with Roy Howat for Edition Stil, and appears as pianist in a CD of herchamber music for the Symposium label. Her most recent recordings for Naxos feature world premiere recordings of songs by Arthur Benjamin and Edgar Bainton accompanying Susan Bickley (mezzo) and Christopher Gillett (tenor), and the songs of Grace Williams with the Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams.

She is currently Artistic Director of Celebrating Australian Music (CAM), with Arthur Benjamin forming the focus of her doctorate, an ABC radio documentary, and a biography due for release at the Beaumaris Festival in 2027 published by Lyrita Nimbus Arts.