 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(October 2023) |
Richard Albert Letts AM is a music advocate and administrator.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(October 2023) |
Richard Albert Letts AM is a music advocate and administrator.
Richard Letts trained as a classical pianist and composer and worked as a jazz band leader in his early years. In 1964 he moved to the University of California (Berkeley), where he completed his PhD in 1971. In 1972 he built and became the director of the East Bay Center for Performing Arts, a community performing arts school in a ghetto on San Francisco’s East Bay. In 1980 he became director of the MacPhail Center for the Arts, the downtown music school of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and in 1981 was elected vice-president of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts.[ citation needed ]
In 1982 Letts returned to Australia as director of the music board of the Australia Council, where he initiated major developments in policy that "had a profound influence in reshaping the pattern of government support for music in Australia" (Bebbington 1997). He became director of the Australian Music Centre in 1987, and introduced programs in digitisation, record production, publishing, retailing, the awards program and others.[ citation needed ]
In 1994, he founded and was inaugural executive director of the Music Council of Australia. [1]
In 2005, he was elected president of the International Music Council, based in UNESCO in Paris. He was responsible for some major innovations in its program, including the establishment of an international music sector development program, the weekly e-bulletin Music World News, [2] and the initiation of the IMC Musical Rights Awards. [3]
The APRA Awards are held in Australia and New Zealand by the Australasian Performing Right Association to recognise songwriting skills, sales and airplay performance by its members annually.
| Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Richard Letts | Long-Term Contribution to the Advancement of Australian Music | Won | [5] |
The Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award is given to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to music in Australia.
| Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 [6] | Richard Letts | Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award | awarded |
All monographs are available for loan from the Australian Music Centre. [7]
David Chesworth is an Australian-based interdisciplinary artist, composer and sound designer. Known for his experimental, and at times, minimalist music, he has worked solo, in post-punk groups, electronic music, contemporary ensembles and experimental performance. He has also created installation and video artworks with collaborator Sonia Leber, such as Zaum Tractor included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and This Is Before We Disappear From View commissioned by Sydney Biennale (2014).
APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The two organisations work together to license public performances and administer performance, communication and reproduction rights on behalf of their members, who are creators of musical works, aiming to ensure fair payments to members and to defend their rights under the Australian Copyright Act (1968).
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Australian orchestra based in Melbourne. The MSO is resident at Hamer Hall. The MSO has its own choir, the MSO Chorus, following integration with the Melbourne Chorale in 2008.
John Gregory Foreman is an Australian musician and television personality. From 1992 to 2004, he was the music director for Network Ten's Good Morning Australia with Bert Newton. From 2003 until 2008 he was musical director of Australian Idol. He is the chair of the National Australia Day Council.
Richard James Gill was an Australian conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic works. He was known as a music educator and for his advocacy for music education of children.
Bartholomew Edwin Willoughby is an Aboriginal Australian musician, noted for his pioneering fusion of reggae with Indigenous Australian musical influences, and for his contribution to growth of Indigenous music in Australia. A multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and singer, he is known as a founder member and leader of the No Fixed Address, which was the first Aboriginal rock band in Australia, and the first Aboriginal band to travel overseas.
Richard John Mills is an Australian conductor and composer. He is currently the artistic director of Victorian Opera, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera Batavia (2001).
The Australian Music Centre (AMC), founded as Australia Music Centre in 1974 and known as Sounds Australian in the 1990s, is a national organisation promoting and supporting art music in Australia. It operates mainly as a service organisation, and co-hosts the Art Music Awards along with APRA AMCOS. It also publishes Resonate Magazine.
Graeme John Koehne, is an Australian composer and music educator. He is best known for his orchestral and ballet scores, which are characterised by direct communicative style and embrace of tertian harmony. His orchestral trilogy Unchained Melody, Powerhouse, and Elevator Music makes allusions to Hollywood film score traditions, cartoon music, popular Latin music and other dance forms.
Nigel Westlake is an Australian composer, musician and conductor. As a composer for the screen, his film credits include the feature films Ali's Wedding, Paper Planes, Miss Potter, Babe, Babe: Pig in the City, Children of the Revolution and The Nugget. He also composed the theme for SBS World News.
Andrew Ford is an English-born Australian composer, writer, and radio presenter, known for The Music Show on ABC Radio National.
Andrew Schultz is an acclaimed Australian classical composer. A musician with a large and widely performed output and an international sphere of activity he has, since 2008, lived in Sydney, New South Wales. He studied at the Universities of Queensland and Pennsylvania and at King's College London and he has received many awards, prizes and fellowships including a Fulbright Award (1982), the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award (1985), Grand-Prix, Opera Screen de Opéra-Bastille (1991), the APRA Award for Classical Composition of the Year (1993), the Schueler Award (2007), the Paul Lowin Prize (2009) and the Centenary of Canberra Symphony Commission (2012). He holds a Bachelor of Music (Hons), Master of Music, and Doctor of Philosophy in musical composition.
Robert Watson Hughes AO MBE was a Scottish-born Australian composer. His melodies are driven by short motives and unrelenting ostinato figures.
Roger David Covell AM FAHA was an Australian musicologist, critic and author. He was Professor Emeritus in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, and continued until shortly before his death to contribute articles and reviews to The Sydney Morning Herald, where he served as principal music critic from 1960 until the late 1990s.
David Worrall is an Australian composer and sound artist working a range of genres, including data sonification, sound sculpture and immersive polymedia as well as traditional instrumental music composition.
Sydney Chamber Choir is a choir from Sydney formed as the Sydney University Chamber Choir in 1975.
The Melbourne Conservatorium of Music is the music school at the University of Melbourne and part of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. It is located near the Melbourne City Centre on the Southbank campus of the University of Melbourne.
Gordon Kerry is an Australian composer, music administrator, music writer and music critic.
Peter Knight is an Australian musician, composer and producer. He was the Artistic Director and co-CEO of the Australian Art Orchestra from 2013 to 2023 and founding member of Melbourne group Way Out West., 5+2 Brass Ensemble, and Hand to Earth
Paul Stanhope is an Australian composer, conductor and music educator, known for his choral and instrumental music.
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