Nat Bartsch To Deliver 2024 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address

Pianist, composer, and producer Nat Bartsch will deliver the 2024 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address which will take place in Melbourne (Naarm) on 2 December. The event will take place in the Hanson Dyer Hall, The Ian Potter Southbank Centre.

The occasion will be marked by world premiere performances with MOMENTUM Commissions by Christine Pan and Aaron Wyatt. It is the first time since 2019, that the Address has been presented in Melbourne (Naarm).

As the annual forum for ideas about the creation and performance of Australian music, the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address invites discourse and to challenge ideas around contemporary issues effecting the art music community. Drawing from her own personal experience, Bartsch will address the topic of neurodiversity in music, and how her late diagnosis of autism and ADHD has shaped her music and career.

The Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address will be followed by world premiere performances of works by Australian composers Christine Pan and Aaron Wyatt, recipients of the Australian Music Centre’s MOMENTUM Commissions. Awarded in February this year, the Commission called for a musical response to a subject of personal significance to the composers. Christine Pan’s work Umwelt encapsulates parallel narratives of her interest in the science of soundscape preservation and the reconciliation that comes after growing up in an immigrant family. Noongar man Aaron Wyatt’s Where to from Here? responds to the outcome of the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum. These works will be performed by students and recent alumni of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

Tickets for the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address are currently available by invitation only.

Nat Bartsch is a double-ARIA nominated pianist, composer, producer, mentor and neurodiversity advocate. Her music creates a space for the listener to be in the moment, created with a unique blend of neoclassical composition, jazz harmony and improvisation, and ethereal ambient effects, often addressing universal themes from her own, intimate perspective.

Bartsch has released eight albums of original music and recently established Amica Records after several years releasing music for ABC Music. Nat has been awarded an Art Music Award for Jazz Work of the Year, the Melbourne Prize for Music development award, two ARIA nominations (in jazz and classical categories), AIR, Music Victoria and Bell Award nominations. She holds a degree in jazz improvisation and a Masters in classical composition from the University of Melbourne. Her music has been streamed more than 10 million times. This year, Nat is Artist-in-Residence at Melbourne Recital Centre and is releasing a new album, Forever Changed, which explores and celebrates the neurodivergent experience of music in immersive surround sound. Nat has composed commissions for Grigoryan Brothers, Muses Trio, Matt Withers and Sally Whitwell, Plexus Collective, Inventi Ensemble, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and ABC Jazz.

The Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address was established in 1999 by the New Music Network, in honour of one of Australia’s great international composers. In the spirit of Glanville-Hicks, an outstanding advocate of Australian music delivers the address each year, challenging the status quo and raising issues of importance in new music. Since its founding, the Address has developed into a landmark event in the Australian new music scene. The Australian Music Centre took on the important custodianship of the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address in 2018. Speakers over the years have included leading Australian composers, performing artists, educators and artistic directors, including Elena Kats-Chernin, William Barton, Deborah Cheetham-Fraillon AO, and Kim Williams AM.