Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address 2024

The 2024 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address will be delivered by Nat Bartsch

A twice ARIA-nominated pianist, composer, and producer from Melbourne (Naarm), Australia, Nat Bartsch is celebrated for creating soothing, beautiful music that blends neoclassical composition with jazz harmony, improvisation, and etheral ambient effects. 

The Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address will be followed by two world premiere performances of works by Christine Pan and Aaron Wyatt, recipients of the most recent round of the Australian Music Centre's MOMENTUM Commissions. The performances will feature current students and recent alumni of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. 

Doors: 6:45pm
Event commences: 7pm 

Following the presentation, please join us for complimentary drinks in the Hanson Dyer Hall foyer on Level 3.

Program

Nat Bartsch, Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address

Christine Pan, Umwelt (World premiere)
for bass clarinet 

Aaron Wyatt, Where to from here? (World premiere)
for piano, viola, clarinet

The Australian Music Centre is a not-for-profit organisation. Please consider adding a donation with your free ticket registration to contribute to our work in supporting Australian art music. 

This event is presented in partnership with the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. 

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About the speaker: Nat Bartsch 

Nat Bartsch is a twice ARIA-nominated pianist, composer and producer from Melbourne, Australia. She is known for creating soothing, beautiful music that blends neoclassical composition with jazz harmony, improvisation and ethereal ambient effects. Her sound at the piano is distinctively gentle and warm, enriched by lyrical, ethereal melodies. Her music is played across the world by people from all walks of life, often in deeply personal moments: literally from the birthing suite, to the final hours before death. She has released eight albums, toured domestically and internationally, and collaborated with many leading Australian artists including Luke Howard, Grigoryan Brothers, Back to Back Theatre, Inventi Ensemble, Teeny Tiny Stevies, Playschool and Plexus Collective. She recently established her own record label, Amica Records, which includes Amica Familia, a home for mentoring and industry skills development for emerging artists. She is proudly neurodivergent.

Nat has become most well known for her lullabies, which, during early motherhood, saw her translate her gentle aesthetic into music with purpose. Nat created a suite of pieces designed to soothe babies to sleep, but also be meaningfully enjoyable for adults. After interviewing music therapists, she composed a series of pieces incorporating as many of their recommended parameters as possible (tempos similar to a mother’s heartbeat, gentle sounds, simple melodies and harmonies, ostinatos and repetition). Each piece is named after her newborn son’s stage of development at the time. The resulting album, Forever, and No Time At All was released in 2018 on ABC Classic. It is played regularly by many families, but also by people from all walks of life, including women in labour, autistic people, and people experiencing mental illness and grief.

In 2020, Nat released Forever More, a jazz sextet re-interpretation of her lullabies, which was nominated for an ARIA for Best Jazz Album. In May 2021 she released her critically acclaimed album Hope, for piano, string quartet and electronics. Nat received an ARIA nomination again for this release- Best Classical Album. In 2023 she again released a jazz-reinterpretation, also leaning into a lifetime love of post rock, titled Hope Renewed.

In 2024, as Artist in Residence at Melbourne Recital Centre, Nat releases a special long-awaited follow up to her original lullaby album, Forever, and No Time At All. Forever Changed, is a suite of lullabies that reflect and celebrate the discovery of Nat’s autistic and ADHD identity; and explore the unique sensory preferences of neurodivergent people in music.

Nat is also a chamber music composer, and has composed commissions for Grigoryan Brothers, Inventi Ensemble, Plexus Collective, Solstice Trio, Muses Trio, Stonnington Symphony Orchestra and Matt Withers & Sally Whitwell. She holds a Masters degree in classical composition from Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and an Honours degree in jazz improvisation from the Victorian College of the Arts. She was also bandleader of her own jazz piano trio for many years.

This breadth of experience enables Nat to sit comfortably between genres, challenging assumptions of what a ‘classical’ or ‘jazz’ artist should be. Nat is one of a small handful of artists to be ARIA nominated in both jazz and classical categories in their career, and the first female instrumentalist. After several years releasing music for both ABC Jazz and ABC Classic, she has now established her own record label, Amica Records, for genre bending, kind music. Amica is created in collaboration with Canadian neoclassical label Moderna Records.

About the composer: Christine Pan

Christine Pan is a Sydney-based artist led by her passion for powerful storytelling. Her practice spans into various areas of gaming, science, palliative care, film and theatre.

Christine’s compositions have been featured by Goldner Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Vivid Sydney, Musica Viva, ABC Classic, Orchestra Victoria, WASO, and MSO. She has published and premiered works internationally by University of Nebraska, University of Kansas and most recently, Mount St Mary’s University in LA.

In 2020, she was resident composer for Liverpool Palliative Care Unit and has contributed to research by University of Wollongong and LGBTIQ+ Health Australia in this area.

Christine is currently working as a sound designer, composer and musical director for theatre and has received a Sydney Theatre Award and various Broadway World awards. She is excited to be a part of ANAM Set this year to work with clarinettist Dario Scalabrini and be a featured panellist at the Asian Classical Music Conference in LA.

About the composer: Aaron Wyatt 

Aaron is an accomplished violist who has appeared regularly throughout the past decade as a casual with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. As well as playing symphonic repertoire, he has performed in a number of highly successful fringe and festival shows, including the award-winning City of Shadows, which went on to perform seasons in New York and Melbourne, and Barking Gecko's critically acclaimed production of Duck, Death and the Tulip. In addition to this, Aaron has sung as a bass with the eclectic choir The Spooky Men of the West, played violin with Indian/jazz fusion group Nadis, and has had numerous conducting commitments. Amongst these he has been the musical director of the South Side Symphony Orchestra, has been a regular conductor with the Allegri Chamber Orchestra, and conducted the initial workshop in Adelaide of Cat Hope’s new noise opera Speechless. Aaron has also worked and toured extensively with the Decibel new music ensemble, both as a player and as a programmer of the group’s animated graphic notation software for the iPad.

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About the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address

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. The Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address is the single most important national forum for contemporary music discourse.

About the MOMENTUM Commissions 

MOMENTUM sought to connect artists with the generous support of private philanthropists for professional opportunities to create new musical work. Since its inception, MOMENTUM has commissioned new works by Australian composers: Rae Howell, Zinia Chan, Anne Cawrse, Nicole Murphy, Elizabeth Younan, Connor D'Netto, Maria Grenfell, Reuben Lewis, and Helen Svoboda.

With MOMENTUM we aim to foster connections between supporters and creators of Australian art music and provide a creative platform for composers and sounds artists at all stages of their career. The work of creating art is essential, and the MOMENTUM Commissions seek to provide the financial stimulation artists need to flourish in their creative work.