THE indefatigable Christopher Latham, former “CityNews” Artist of the Year and director of The Gallipoli Symphony, will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Canberra on April 2.

Latham, who holds dual French and Australian citizenship, is also the recipient of an Australian Anzac Fellowship from 2015 to 2018 and a reciprocal ‘French Mission Centenaire 14-18’ fellowship that will see him following the music sung on the Western Front, is at present putting together a series of concerts on music during war.

The first in this series called “The Flowers of War,” will be heard in a free concert at the High Court of Australia from 1:30pm on Sunday, April 12.

Latham stepped down as director of the Canberra International Music Festival last year after five years at the helm, during which time, especially during the 2014 event, he programmed in music by composers who either lost their lives in or were affected by the Great War.

A considerable scholar who, before becoming a festival director, worked for the music publisher Boosey and Hawkes, Latham has made himself an expert on the works of Australian-born composer and Olympic rower Frederick Septimus Kelly, who died on the Western Front in 1916. It is for this and for his other research on the music of World Wat I that he has been honoured.

Since leaving the Music Festival, Latham has settled in suburban Downer with his family, where he says there is a lively group of like-minded musicians with whom to share ideas.

Latham said yesterday that “The Flowers of War” (in France it will be called “Les Fleurs de Guerre”) is to be series of 25 concert programs over four years exploring “how music sustained the human spirit in the face of war” and that it should be “largely sewn up in both Australia and France” by July.

“I feel good about doing the work,” he said, “recovering the lost pieces of music, telling stories that should be remembered about artists who served, and generally honouring the Great War dead from my profession.”

Latham, who is also the director of “Illumina: remembering the lost voices of World War 1” and “Voices in the Forest,” said that this year he would not be travelling to the Gallipoli Peninsula during April, but was rather putting finishing touches to the score of for The Gallipoli Symphony for performance in Istanbul on August 4.

The culmination of a ten-year, tri-nation project directed by Latham that has involved the commissioning of new works by Australian, New Zealand and Turkish composers, the full length Symphony is intended to mark the centenary of the ANZAC landing.