Nominations Open For Paul Lowin Prizes 2016
The prestigious Paul Lowin Prizes are open for nominations until 5 pm on June 30, 2016.
The prizes comprise the Paul Lowin Orchestral Prize 2016 of $25,000 and the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize 2016 of $15,000.
Managed by Perpetual in collaboration with the Australian Music Centre, the Paul Lowin Prizes were last offered in 2013. They are among Australia’s richest prizes for music composition and a continuing testament to the power of philanthropy in fostering and encouraging new creative works of music.
The Orchestral Prize ($25,000) is awarded for a work for modern chamber or symphony orchestra of at least 30 players and 15 independent lines. The work may include instrumental or vocal soloists and/or choral, electronically produced or pre-recorded elements.
The Song Cycle Prize ($15,000) will be awarded to a work suitable for chamber performance, using no more than 1-8 independent vocal lines, accompanied by up to 10 instrumental players.
At the discretion of the jury, highly commended works may receive a $400 prize.
Previous recipients of the Paul Lowin Prizes include Nigel Westlake, Elliott Gyger, Mary Finsterer, Andrew Schultz, Brett Dean, Rosalind Page, Nigel Butterley, Julian Yu, Georges Lentz, Brenton Broadstock, Martin Wesley-Smith, Raffæle Marcellino, Liza Lim and Andrew Ford.
Nominations are accepted from anyone, including publishers, composers and the general public.
Click here for the guidelines for the 2016 Paul Lowin Prizes, including eligibility details.
Click here to lodge entries online.
The Paul Lowin Prizes are named after Paul Lowin who was born in 1893 in Czechoslovakia, and who lived in Austria in the 1930s before settling in Australia in 1939. He lived in Australia for two decades before returning to Vienna, where he died in 1961. Lowin’s great passion in life was music, and he left a hand-written will which indicated his wish to establish a competition for works by living Australian composers in a ‘modern but not too modern’ style. Because of the lack of clarity in the will, there ensued a thirty-year sustained effort by the executors of his estate to establish a viable competition for composers. The competition was initially held every three years in 1991-97. In 1995 further changes by the court enabled the competition to be held every 2-3 years.
