Cat Hope - Artistic and Music research leadership 2020 - 2024

NOMINATION: Luminary - Individual

NOMINATION: Luminary - Individual

The Luminary Awards seek to honour individuals who, through sustained contribution (demonstrated over a period 3-5 years prior), have impacted our community on a national scale through visionary leadership, fearless trailblazing, high-level artistic practice, and championing of Australian repertoire. Nominations for individuals should demonstrate a program of activities or a range of projects rather than (for example) the recording and release of a single album. Nominations for a single work or project should be made in the Work of the Year or Excellence categories.

If you believe you are nominated in the wrong category or the details of your nomination to be incorrect, please contact the AMC via email at awards@australianmusiccentre.com.au before proceeding with the nomination.

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Nominee

Cat Hope

Nominated Project/Activity

Artistic and Music research leadership 2020 - 2024

State/Territory

Victoria

Nominator Statement
Visionary leadership: of Decibel new music ensemble's ongoing commissioning (over 40 works in this period), touring (5 national shows, 28 international appearnces) and recording (24 tracks, 3 albums) of Australian music. Head of Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music (SZCSoM) during the start of the terrible COVID times - ensuring music programs continued and supporting the community through commissioning of new Australian work for online performance at the school, leading the field of digital notations for music around the world with keynotes in Australia, Sweden, London, Germany and Austria and publishing over 10 articles and book chapters on that subject worldwide. She is also the global south representative on a major European researh Council poject, bringing in AUD $30 000 to commission and perform Australian work that innovates the concept of the music score (10 works, 3 concerts and counting).

Fearless trailblazing: as an artist, Cat leads innovation with compositional and performance approaches. Her opera Speechless for four vocal soloists, bass orchestra and community choir was premiered in Germany in 2022, and the Australian premiere of the work in 2019 is being released in on CD this year. As an educator she has moved the focus of one of Australia's major tertiary music institutions toward Australian music; a focus on the importance of women in music through keynotes (ACMC, TENOR) , publications and authoring a successful Australian Research Council to study and support an inrease in the number of women working in Australian in jazz and improvisation (2020 - 25). Cat led the development team of the Decibel ScorePlayer software - an innovative way to coordinate the reading of graphic notations, seeing more graphic notated music being made and performed, and adopted around the world

High-level artistic practice: Her program Voluminum, celebrating Ligeti's centrary, involved a major 45minute commission from the Melbourne Town Hall, where she combined rock and classical insturments (guitar, bass, harp, percussion and town hall organ) to create a homage to her biggest inspiration, Ligeti - a mix of noise and sublime classical highlights in 2023; a monograph show of her work at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2022 which led the director Graham McKenzie calling her 'Australia's most exciting composer"; commissions from ensembles and soloists in Sweden, Germany, Ireland, UK and France; a major commission from Tectonics Festival (covid cancelled) in 2020; flute solo performances of music by Eliane Radigue and Lionel Marchetti in Greece (Tectonics 2022) and Australia and an album of her music being released on Swiss label Hat Hut in 2021 - whcih led to her being called 'Australia's most

Championing of Australian repertoire : see the above work with Decibel, SZCSoM and the ERC research funding and her ongoing academic work championing the innovative work of Australian composers engaged in digital and animated notations. as a Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced study in 2022 - 23, Cat championed Australian music through 4 concerts and the European premiere of her opera in Hamburg.

Eligibility checklist

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