The Australian Music Centre has announced that Mallacoota-based composer Padma Newsome has received the 2024 Albert H. Maggs Composition Award for his work The French Violin, presented by the University of Melbourne.

Padma Newsome. Photo courtesy of Padma Newsome

The French Violin for baroque orchestra was written in the wake of the destructive 2019-2020 bushfires that hit Mallacoota, and tore through the Karbeethong forest near Newsome’s home.

The work draws inspiration from a restored 1820 violin from French luthier Didier Nicolas and uses Baroque tuning, which the instrument “seemed to settle best into”, he told Adelaide Baroque in 2022.

The instrument was gifted to Newsome amongst a pile of broken violins by friends, who later lost their home in the Black Summer blaze.

“I think mostly what I’m on about is my relationship with the land, and by extension, communicating these post-fire recovery stories. I’m interested in people making their own decisions about whether the music is representative,” said Newsome.

The work was premiered by the Adelaide Baroque Orchestra in 2022.

Born in Alice Springs, Newsome is a composer, arranger and performer whose practice spans contemporary classical, electroacoustic, folk and rock music, improvisation...