The 2022 Ivors Composer Awards winners have been announced, with Australian composer Brett Dean taking home the Chamber Ensemble Award, his first Ivor Novello Award from The Ivors Academy.

Brett Dean with his Chamber Ensemble Award. Photo © Mark Allan.

Previously known as the British Composer Awards, this year’s ceremony marks its 20th edition and will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3. It recognises excellence in new music in the fields of classical, jazz and sound art as supported by PRS for Music and BBC Radio 3. Each of winners receives an Ivor Novello Award. Previous recipients include Harrison Birtwistle, Tansy Davis, Anna Meredith and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

Dean received the Chamber Ensemble Award for Madame ma bonne sœur, a song cycle written for mezzo-soprano and string quartet and adapted from the 1560s letters of Mary, Queen of Scots by Matthew Jocelyn. It was commissioned by Oxford’s Lieder Festival in collaboration with Germany’s Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and premiered by the Armida Quartet with soloist Lotte Betts-Dean, the composer’s daughter, in 2021 at Oxford Lieder.

The jury awarded the...