Genevieve Lacey and Marshall McGuire have won the award for Best Classical Album or EP at the 2022 Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) Awards for their album Bower, released by the ABC.

The recorder virtuoso and harpist collaborated digitally during Melbourne’s 2020 lockdown to record the album, which features Baroque and new, experimental music. They subsequently took the material on a national tour presented by Musica Viva Australia.

2022 AIR Awards

Genevieve Lacey and Marshall McGuire accept their award at the 2022 AIR Awards. Photo © Tony Lewis

In an interview for Limelight, Lacey said that the project was inspired by bowerbirds, who “collect tiny, exquisite fragments and make them into an extraordinary whole … A place where they very theatrically dance and sing in order to attract a mate”.

Limelight gave the album a 4.5-star review, saying: “Lacey’s recorder and McGuire’s harp swoop and flit among their animating spirits’ eclectic musical hoard, holding up for our admiration first one then another musical gem: some ancient, some newly wrought.”

“The metallic sheen of contemporary works by Erkki Veltheim and Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, with their use of multi-tracking and electronics,...