Meet the Commissioned Artists of 2024

We are passionate about bringing you the best new Australian music. Learn more about the composers and writers whose works will be premiered in 2024.

Liza Lim is a composer, educator and researcher whose music focuses on collaborative and transcultural practices. Beauty, rage & noise, ecological connection, and female spiritual lineages are at the heart of recent
works such as Sex Magic (2020) for Claire Chase; the orchestral cycle, Annunciation Triptych: Sappho, Mary, Fatimah (2019–22), and the piano concerto World as Lover, World as Self (2021). Her large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) has found especially wide resonance internationally and highlights
ecological listening to more-than human realms.

Commissioned for Musica Viva Australia by the Hildegard Project, supporting female composers. Liza Lim’s new work will be premiered by Kirill Gerstein.

Damian Barbeler is an Australian composer and multimedia artist whose works have been performed and broadcast around the world. He is recognised for his lush, emotional creations inspired by the natural environment. His work frequently explores our personal relationship and connection to the landscape, through an awakening to elements of texture, light, and colour. He often hikes and travels in the bush for inspiration. Damian regularly collaborates with colleagues from diverse fields including film, architecture, media arts, and dance, and often incorporates his own visual, sculptural and lighting elements in musical projects.

The new work with music by Damian Barbeler and words by Judith Nangala Crispin is commissioned for Musica Viva Australia by Richard Wilkins and will be premiered by The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. 

Judith Nangala Crispin is a Canberra-based poet and visual artist, with a background in music. She has published two collections of poetry, and a book of images and poems made while living with the Warlpiri people. She is a member of Oculi photographic collective and was Musica Viva Australia’s Artist in Residence from 2021. Her work includes themes of displacement and identity loss, a reflection on her own lost Aboriginal ancestry, but primarily it is centred on the concept of connection with Country. She traces her ancestry to the Bpangerang people of North-Eastern Victoria and the NSW Riverina; and to Ghana, the Ivory Coast, France, Ireland and Scotland.

For two decades, William Barton has forged a peerless profile as a performer and composer in the classical music world, from working with the Philharmonic Orchestras of London and Berlin to appearances at historic events at Westminster Abbey for Commonwealth Day 2019, to Anzac Cove and the Beijing Olympics.

His awards include Winner of Best Original Score for a Mainstage Production at the 2018 Sydney Theatre Awards and Winner of ARIA Best Classical Album for Kalkadungu in 2012. With his prodigious musicality and the quiet conviction of his Kalkadunga heritage, he has vastly expanded the horizons of the didgeridoo – and the culture and landscape that it represents.

Commissioned by Musica Viva Australia with the support of the Hon Anthe Philippides SC, William Barton will be premiering his work with Ensemble Q.

Owen is an Australian singer, composer, conductor, and pianist currently based in Cambridge, UK. His music has been performed by ensembles including the Vienna Boys’ Choir; Gondwana Choirs; The Song Company; the Choir of St James’ Church, Sydney and the Choir of Trinity College, Melbourne.

Owen has been a Choral Scholar and then Lay Clerk with The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where he was also Musical Director of The King’s Men. He has sung as an ensemble member and soloist with professional groups around the world including Voces8;  Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir; The Song Company; the Armonico Consort; Pinchgut Opera; and Cantillation.

Owen’s new work will be premiered by The Choir of St James, King Street at Musica Viva Australia’s Sydney Morning Masters.

Alice Chance’s works span contemporary classical music, musical theatre and sound art. She grew up on the lands of the Darug people of the Eora Nation, where she has worked with ensembles including Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Offspring, Gondwana Choirs, Moorambilla Voices, and the Barangaroo Delivery Authority.

A three-time finalist in the APRA AMC Art Music Awards, Alice is also original music director of the musical Fangirls and wrote vocal arrangements for the AmazonPrime series Deadloch. Alice’s
works have been performed in venues including the Sydney Opera House, Kennedy Center, City Recital Hall and Trinity Church, Wall St, New York City. Her music is also performed in sheds, paddocks, and showers all
around Australia.

Alice’s new work will be premiered by Affinity Quartet for Musica Viva Australia’s Sydney Morning Masters.