2024 ABC Boyer Lecture series explores classical music in the contemporary age – In a series of four orations delivered by noted musicians and luminaries, the 2024 Boyer Lectures will explore the state of classical music in Australia in the contemporary age.
The series will commence with Professor Anna Goldsworthy delivering a moving lecture with live music exploring the connection between life and music on Thursday 31 October at the ABC Ultimo Studios.
Professor Goldsworthy, Director of the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, said of her contribution to the lecture series,
“Performing is an act of communion: with the composer, with your colleagues, but also – critically – with your audience, which almost wills the experience into being.
“It offers a mode of connection that can feel telepathic. It was the internet before the internet; it is a social media that feeds rather than depletes.”
The lecture will be broadcast on ABC TV and ABC iview on November 1 and later heard on ABC Radio National on November 2.
ABC Chair Kim Williams AM said
“The Boyer Lectures started initially as The ABC Lectures in 1959. It is the major broadcast public lecture series presented in Australia, where leading Australian (and in some instances international) contributors are invited to express their thoughts on major social, cultural, scientific or political issues.
“The lecture series was modelled on the Reith Lectures which were initiated by the BBC to honour its first Director General, Lord Reith. Commencing in 1948, the first BBC Reith Lecture series was given by Bertrand Russell.
“The ABC Lectures were quickly renamed the Boyer Lectures in 1961 to honour Sir Richard Boyer upon his death. Sir Richard was, of course, the distinguished chair of the ABC from 1945 up until his death in 1961.
“2024 will see the 65th anniversary of the ABC/Boyer Lectures and this year hosts four distinguished speakers presenting an anthology series addressing classical music in Australia today. This will be the first time music features as a Boyer Lecture subject.
“There have been four previous anthology lecture series – in 1988 (when four previous speakers gave fresh addresses for the Australian Bicentennial), 1991 when there were two speakers (Faye Gale and Ian Lowe addressing the topic of A Changing Australia), 1993 when seven distinguished Australians (Ian Anderson, Noel Pearson, Dr Yunupingu, Dot West, Jeannie Bell, Gaetano Lui Jnr, and Helen Corbett) were invited to deliver individual lectures to mark the UN’s Year of Indigenous People, and 2002, when the invited speaker was unable to deliver the lectures and the then ABC Chair, Donald McDonald AC delivered introductions to four previously delivered Boyer lectures as a substitute.
“The Boyer Lectures have long been a cornerstone of Radio National’s output and are one of the highlights in Radio National programming annually. To hear the series address music seriously will be, I have no doubt, a rare and special treat for many Australians.”
In 2024 the distinguished composer, writer, and ABC broadcaster, Andrew Ford (long term presenter of The Music Show on Radio National) will host the four speakers and link the series.
Professor Goldsworthy’s lecture will be followed by lectures on Radio National throughout November by Lyn Williams AM, founder and director of Gondwana Choirs, Iain Grandage, leading Australian composer and former Artistic Director of the Perth Festival and accomplished violist, conductor and composer, Aaron Wyatt.
About the speakers:-
Professor Anna Goldsworthy
Professor Anna Goldsworthy performs extensively throughout Australia and internationally, as a soloist and collaborator. She is a founding member of Seraphim Trio, whose most recent recordings are the ARIA-award-winning Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds for Decca, with Paul Kelly, James Ledger, and Alice Keath, and the ABC Classics set Trio Through Time for ABC Classics.
A respected author, Professor Goldsworthy’s debut memoir Piano Lessons was released in Australia, North America, Germany, Korea and Vietnam, and will soon be published in China. Her most recent book, the novel Melting Moments, was released in 2020. She is the author of several works for the stage, including the libretto of the Graeme Koehne’s opera A Christmas Carol.
Professor Goldsworthy has directed numerous festivals, including the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and the Coriole Music Festival. In 2024, she will direct the Music and Mountains Festival in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Lyn Williams AM
For over 30 years Lyn William has harnessed the incredible power of young voices through her world-renowned ensembles: the Sydney Children’s Choir, Gondwana Voices, the Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir and Marliya. Her choirs have appeared with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors and at festivals including the BBC Proms and Polyfollia.
Lyn has commissioned over 200 works from composers across Australia and around the world and continues to foster strong relationships with First Nations artists across Australia. Lyn enjoys a long-standing collaboration with singer-songwriter Felix Riebl of the Cat Empire and the singers of Marliya, presenting the critically acclaimed show Spinifex Gum, which has featured at almost every Australian arts festival since its premiere at the Adelaide Festival in 2018.
In 2017, Lyn received the Australia Council for the Arts’ Don Banks Music Award for outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Australia, in recognition of her lifework as founder and director of Gondwana Choirs.
Iain Grandage
Composer Iain Grandage recently completed a five-year tenure as Artistic Director of the Perth Festival (2020-2024) and has previously been Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, curated the fine music program for the Adelaide Festival (Chamber Landscapes) and was Composer-in-Residence with the WA Symphony Orchestra. He was the 2023 West Australian of the Year for Culture & the Arts.
Iain’s concert works have been performed by the ACO, Brodsky String Quartet, Australian String Quartet, Australian Brass Quintet, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Sara Macliver, Craig Ogden, Claire Edwardes and choirs and orchestras around Australia.
His compositions for the theatre include Helpmann Award winning scores for Cloudstreet, The Secret River, When Time Stops and (in collaboration with Kate Miller-Heidke) The Rabbits, and Green Room Award winning scores for The Riders, Lawn, In the Next Room, Babes in the Wood, The Odyssey and The Blue Room.
Iain’s score for the Garin Nugroho silent film Satan Jawa, co-written with Rahayu Suppangah for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and gamelan musicians, received a Helpmann award for best score, as well as rave reviews from critics.
Aaron Wyatt
Aaron is an accomplished violist, violinist, conductor, composer, programmer, and academic. A Noongar man, Aaron has performed regularly over the past decade 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.
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 including with the South Side Symphony Orchestra and Allegri Chamber Orchestra. 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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2024 ABC Boyer Lecture series explores classical music in the contemporary age
