The Art Music Awards will honour beloved music educator and conductor Richard Gill, who died last year, by renaming the Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music. The newly named Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music will be presented at the 2019 Art Music Awards, which recognise outstanding contributions across contemporary classical music, contemporary jazz and improvised music, experimental music and sound art, held this year at the University of Sydney’s Great Hall. Previous recipients of the award include Gill himself in 2014, Robyn Holmes, John Pochée, Helen Gifford, Larry Sitsky and Peter Sculthorpe.

Richard GillRichard Gill at the 2014 Art Music Awards

“On October 28, 2018, the music world went into mourning at the loss of one of its most adored and cherished advocates. Richard Gill AO, the pragmatist, the polymath, the juggernaut, the educator, the conductor, the wise sage, much loved leader, mentor and believer of all good things, finally succumbed to illness following a devastating and prolonged battle with bowel and peritoneal cancer,” said composer and APRA AMCOS Board Member Nigel Westlake. “In his 76 years, Richard touched many thousands of people...