The winners of the 2024 Australian Music Composition Competition (AMCC) have been announced.

Composers Natalie Nicolas (1st) and Ray Lin (2nd) share in a pool of prizes worth $13,000, including cash, mentorship and a new commercial recording from Australian guitarist Matt Withers, the competition’s creator.

Both will compose a work for solo guitar inspired by Olga Garner-Morris’s painting Coastal Edge, to be featured on Withers’ upcoming album. The pieces will fit alongside a brand new commission by Nat Bartsch.

Natalie Nicolas. Photo supplied

Taking home a $3,000 cash prize for her first prize win, Nicolas will write a solo guitar work called Tempest and Tranquility.

In October, Nicolas was announced as the recipient of the 2025 Layton Fellowship, for which she will write a chamber work for the Australia Ensemble. She also took part in Omega Ensemble’s 2023 CoLAB Composer program, and the MSO’s Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers’ program. Nicolas’s work has been performed by the Sydney, Tasmania, Canberra and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Australian String Quartet, Southern Cross Soloists, the Goldner Quartet, the ACO Collective and Slava Grigoryan.