APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre have announced the finalists for the 2026 Art Music Awards.

Celebrating the accomplishments of Australian musicians in contemporary classical, experimental, jazz and improvised music and music education, this year’s ceremony takes place on 19 August at The Timber Yards, Melbourne.

The ceremony will be hosted by journalist and broadcaster Namila Benson with composer Connor D’Netto and pianist Aura Go as guest presenters and music curation from Sia Ahmad.

The winner of the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music and the State Luminary Awards will be announced in August, prior to the ceremony.

Work of the Year 

In response to a growing number of entries, this year’s Work of the Year stream has seen a small change – the Chamber award has now been split into two separate categories – Solo & Small Ensemble, for works with one to four parts, and Medium Ensemble, for four to 12.

In the Choral category is Adira Arenio and Agnus Dei by Alice Chance with Kaylynn Zaro and Noel Zaro; Adira Arenio is an arrangement of a traditional  language hymn from the Mer Island people of the Torres Strait. Paul Stanhope’s symphonic song cycle Mahāsāgar, Carl Crossin’s 40-part Vivemus Cantare and Stephen Leek’s There Is Music for choir and string quartet are also finalists for the award.

Composer and writer Rósa Lind is the first finalist in the Dramatic category for her work Hiroshima mon Amour, a contemporary operatic adaptation of the 1959 film. Lyle Chan’s Living Poems of the Sea, created with flautist Sally Walker, Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim’s immersive ‘cyber-opera’ Opera for the Dead and Pigeon Humongous, Nicholas Roder’s score for choreographer Harrison Ritchie-Jones’ work, are also nominees.

Aviva Endean, Te Kahureremoa Taumata, Sunny Kim, Maria Moles, Freya Schack-Arnott, and Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung. Photo supplied

Following her 2023 win, Nat Bartsch is back in the running for the Jazz and Improvised (formerly Jazz) category with her work When All Is Still and Quiet. The Cloud Maker, whose music celebrates goddessess from the respective cultures of its members (Aviva Endean, Sunny Kim, Maria Moles, Te Kahreremoa Taumata and Freya Schack-Arnott) also has been recognised, as has Aaron Choulai and rapper Roman MC for To Kill A Magic We Got Used To and tar virtuoso Hamed Sadeghi and Eishan Ensemble for Northern Rhapsody.

The Large Ensemble category recognises five orchestral works: Rrawun Maymuru and Nick Wales’ Nguy Gapu (Ocean Water), Andrew Schultz’s Symphony No. 4, Ben Robinson’s Clarinet Concertino: Second Chance, Alex Turley’s the ocean’s dream of itself and Naomi Dodd’s The way it soars, the way it dances, inspired by the Black Cockatoo.

Lotte Betts-Dean in The Big Idea. Photo © Jared Underwood

The new Medium ensemble category sees nods for Cathy Milliken’s Sonnet of an Emigrant, performed by the Takacs Quartet on its Musica Viva Australia tour, Matthew Shlomowitz’s comic micro-opera The Big Idea with Lotte Betts-Dean and Rubiks Collective, Lee Bradshaw’s Four Rooms and Noemi Liba Friedman’s multimedia chamber work BloodRiverRootTree, drawing upon quantum theory.

Aptly in the new Solo & Small Ensemble Category is Duet for One, a collaborative work from composer Damian Barbeler, media artist Tim Gruchy and pianist Sonya Lifschitz in which Lifschitz performs alongside her recorded self on a homemade piano in a variety of natural landscapes.

The other finalists are Anne Cawrse’s Virginia Woolf-inspired solo flute work, Killing the Angel in the House, Tidelines from Zela Papageorgiou, Alistair McLean and Hamish Upton and Yama no Yume (‘Mountain’s Dream’) by composer and shakuhachi player Jim Franklin.

Last year’s Electroacoustic/Sound Art Award winner composer Kate Milligan has been nominated for this year’s category for her work Dark Oceanography, developed in collaboration with technologist Aaron Wyatt and oceanographer Navid Constantinou. Composer Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh and viola d’amore player Phoebe Green’s Swell, trumpeter-composer Peter Knight’s water and wind-inspired For A Moment the Sky Knew My Name and Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey’s site-specific installation Exhalation are also all nominated.

Performance of the Year 

This year’s Performance of the Year stream has also seen an expansion with a brand new Soloist category, awarded to solo works or solos within a larger body of work, notated or improvised.

Nick Russoniello performing Air Mass. Photo © Jacquie Manning

Up for the inaugural Soloist award is percussionist Claire Edwardes with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Ben Northey, for Iain Grandage’s percussion concerto Dances With Devils (a rehearsal video of the work also brought these finalists viral fame when Northey impressively caught the end of Edwardes’ mallet).

Mindy Meng Wang and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are also finalists for Jessica Wells’ Concerto for Guzheng and Orchestra as is saxophonist Nick Russionello for Air Mass Suite, a solo show featuring saxophones, loop pedal, Debussy and Daft Punk, and pianist Sonya Lifschitz with a second entry for Duet for One.

In the Classical & Experimental category, Speak Percussion‘s Pigeons – in which two percussionists perform and dodge clay pigeons – has been nominated as has the Australian String Quartet and Lou Bennett nyilamum song cycles. Composed by Paul Stanhope and Bennett, the work earned a Performance nomination last year and also took home the 2025 Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize.

Speak Percussion’s Kaylie Melville and Eugene Ughett: Pigeons. Photo © Jeff Busby

Sonja Schebeck with Joshua Frazer and Allie Wang are also finalists for Chloé Charody’s LIMBO Sonata for acrobatic violinist, and Duckworth Hullick Duo (James Hullick and Jonathan Duckworth) for Disruptive Critters, an interactive audiovisual installation built for live vocalisations.

In the Jazz category, clarinettist and composer Aviva Endean leads the category with nominations for two separate works – Lung Swara with Cahwatie Sugiarto and Matthias Schack-Arnott, and with The Cloud Maker (for its second nod). Delay 45 and Ensemble Apex are also up for the award for their performance of trumpeter-composer Tom Avgenicos’s Ghost Between Streams II, and Mad Vantage (Selene Messinis and Timothy Cox) closes out the category with PRESS.

Excellence and Luminary Awards

Now in its 12th year, Ensemble Offspring‘s program for emerging composers and performers, Hatched Academy is a finalist for this year’s Award for Excellence in Music Education. Speak Percussion also sees a second nomination for its free secondary school education program Sounds Unheard and its 25th anniversary exhibition, Silent Hand Catches Silver Bell. Musician and educator Tim Nikolsky is recognised for the Australian Jazz Real Book, his digital and print initiative curating Australian jazz works from Australian composers, as has the Wollongong Conservatorium of Music for its In Schools program.

The finalists for the Award for Excellence in a Regional Area are Chamber Music Adelaide and Port Augusta Performing Arts for the series Where We Meet: Chamber Music, Moorambilla Voices for its ongoing commitment to delivering “artistically excellent, culturally grounded music-making” in regional NSW, Tura and Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre for the album and songbook Buga Yanu Junba (Songs for Young Children) and the Tasmanian-based Van Diemen’s Band, for its VDB Lunchbox Concerts hosted across Hobart, Launceston and Burnie.

Composer Biddy Connor, whose duet for vocalist and hospital IVF drip will feature in Chamber Made’s Listening Acts. Photo © Sarah Walker

For excellence in experimental music and her ongoing contribution to the Australian art music scene, Mindy Meng Wang has earned her third nomination this year for the Award for Excellence in Experimental Practice. Also nominated is Melbourne-based organisation Chamber Made for its 2025 activities and programs, The Sonicrats for The Music Makers’ program and saxophonist Shaun Fogarty for his immersive performance SOUNDSTONE.

Up for this year’s National Luminary Award for an organisation  are Flinders Quartet, Forest Collective, Rubiks Collective and Musica Viva Australia; for an individual, pianist and professor Jeanell Carrigan, percussionist and ELISION Ensemble leader Daryl Buckley, saxophonist and Earshift Music founder Jeremy Rose and Hobart-based experimenter Jon Smeathers.

More about the 2026 Art Music Awards can be found here.