Bree van Reyk, a first class honours graduate in percussion performance from the ANU, has been awarded a grant to pay for the commission of a new work for orchestra as a homage to Peg Mantle, one of Australia’s pioneering women musicians.

The premiere performance will be by the Canberra Youth Orchestra at the Canberra International Music Festival in May 2019, with subsequent performances from the Sydney Youth Orchestra and West Australian Youth Orchestra in Gilgandra, Sydney and Perth throughout 2019.

Van Reyk, Connor D’Netto, Elissa Goodrich, Fiona Hill, Julian Day, Matt Keegan, Rae Howell, and Tristan Coelho, were awarded $100,000 in grants to create “bold new works”.

The Art Music Fund, now in its third year, is aimed at composers who can demonstrate the breadth of place that art music can achieve.

CEO of the Australian Music Centre. John Davis says: “It is gratifying to see such creative diversity represented in the list of recipients of the fund, which reflect the many streams of activity in art music across the cultural sector.”

The funded works, he says, will grace stages in Canberra, Perth, Sydney, Gilgandra, Melbourne, London, New York, Brussels, India and beyond.

The music centre is a national service organisation dedicated to the promotion and support of both the art form of music and the creators and performers of contemporary classical, improvised jazz, experimental music and sound art in Australia.