ABC Young Performer Award Gets A New Lease Of Life
Hearts sank at the end of last year when the ABC announced that the annual ABC Young Performer Award which had run continuously since 1944, launching the careers of numerous musicians, was to be axed.
After a hiatus of a year, the ABC has announced that the Young Performers Awards are to continue in a new partnership agreement with the Musicians and Opera Singers Trust Ltd (MOST). MOST also supports the annual Australian Singing Competition that was previously vocal part of the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Awards, the forerunner of the YPA.
The renewed awards will be known as the ABC Young Performers Awards. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra will be a presenting partner and the Sydney Opera House the presenting partner. The competition finals will be broadcast live on ABC Classic FM.
More than just a contest, the nation’s only national fixture for emerging musicians has, for 71 years, served as a platform for some of Australia’s most successful musicians to launch their careers – pianists Roger Woodward, Simon Tedeschi and Tamara-Anna Cislowska, baritone Jonathan Summers, soprano Rosamund Illing, mezzo-sopranos Catherine Carby and Fiona Campbell, violist, conductor and composer Brett Dean, oboeist Diana Doherty, percussionist Claire Edwardes, violinists Natalie Chee, Shaun Lee-Chen, Susie Park – are just some of the names on an honour roll of musicians associated with this award who have made their name both in Australia and around the world.
The winner in 2015 was Brisbane clarinet player Lloyd Van’t Hoff, who won the competition playing Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Johannes Fritzsch at Federation Concert Hall in Hobart.
Click here to read our interview with him after his momentous win.
