Music UNSW has announced that composer Felix Wallis is the recipient of the 2026 Layton Emerging Composer Fellowship.

Granting $10,000, the Fellowship also gives a rising composer the opportunity to compose a chamber work for the Australia Ensemble and offers mentorship from established composers.

Felix Wallis. Photo supplied

Wallis is a composer, producer and arranger who works across contemporary classical and screen music. In 2024, he was nominated for the inaugural Emerging Screen Composer of the Year award.

He was a participant in Omega Ensemble’s 2024 CoLAB program. He is the band leader of jazz ensemble Miniflora, set to release its debut EP later this year. His work is featured in the documentary More Than Human, the audio drama F.A.B.R.I.C, the Sydney Opera House installation Music of the Sails and the upcoming miniseries Mammals. His arrangements feature on tracks by The Kid LAROI and Cap Carter, and in the Ministry of Sound’s Classical tour.

Announced alongside the Australia Ensemble’s 2026 season, the panel said Wallis’s winning work was “distinguished by particularly good idiomatic instrumental writing over a good variety of simpler to more complex textures, including some lovely syncopated counterpoint”.

Past winners of...