MUSICIAN, composer and collaborator, Iain Grandage (pictured) has taken out the Individual Award of $50,000 in the 2013 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards, while leading Indigenous theatre company, Ilbijerri  has been recognised with the Group Award of $80,000. 

Philip Rolfe, producer, festival director, bureaucrat and cultural industry shape-shifter has been awarded the Facilitator’s Prize ($20,000).

The awards, announced for the first time in Canberra to honour the Centenary, (usually the announcements take place in Melbourne)  were created in 1984 by the Trustees of the Sidney Myer Fund at the time of the 50th anniversary of Sidney Myer’s death to commemorate his life and his love for the arts. They pay tribute to outstanding excellence in drama, comedy, dance, music, opera, circus and puppetry in  Australia.

In announcing the winners, Carrillo Gantner, chairman of the Sidney Myer Fund Trustees commented: “The 2012 winners are all outstanding in their field and have inspired us not just through their individual and collective achievements, but through their constant imaginative striving to challenge what is possible. Their dedication and creative genius has been a gift to us all.”

“Sidney Myer was a great philanthropist, patron of the arts and supporter of community life. These Awards support his belief that the arts are inseparable from everyday life and a rich society is one that expresses great creative spirit”.

Gantner described Grandage as “a thrillingly original artist and genius collaborator. The theatre, dance and cabaret stages of Neil Armfield, Michael Kantor, Meow Meow, Splinters Group and The Black Arm Band, to name just a few, have achieved extraordinary dimensions in dramatic narrative through his original music and arrangements, and no less some of the great classical music ensembles of our time including the Brodsky Quartet. He is a singular and much loved artist whose contribution is close to the heart of our performance culture.”

He praised  Ilbijerri Theatre Company for  22 years of courageous and political Indigenous story-telling, in which Ilbijerri have performed thirty new works to audiences of more than 150,000.

“In  the last five years under Rachael Maza’s inspired and spirited leadership,” he continued,  “the company has been questioning what contemporary Indigenous theatre is to astonishingly powerful purpose. Ilbijerri are not just being invited to perform on the most sought after stages in the country because their art is urgent, they are challenging all theatre makers to take note of how theatre must evolve to speak truthfully to each generation. “

Finally, in awarding Philip Rolfe the  Facilitator’s Prize, Gantner said, “Philip Rolfe makes things happen: he initiates, he drives change be it in organisational culture, policy, attitudes or in our relationships with the rest of the world. He’s been entrepreneurial in the best sense of that term: ambitious – not for himself but for art, artists, and organisations – whether establishing the Australian Performing Arts Market, the Producing Unit at Sydney Opera House (Message Sticks Indigenous Film Program, Luminous and Kids at the House), or more recently the Parramasala Festival in Parramatta.”

For further details visit myerfoundation.org.au