Ngarra-burria: First Peoples Composers program, an Indigenous-led composers development program, has won a major international award at the Classical:NEXT festival in Hannover, Germany.

Classical:NEXT is the largest industry conference in the classical and art music world, gathering together 1,000 artists and industry professionals from more than 45 countries. The Innovation Award seeks to raise awareness of “forward-thinking projects taking place around the world”. with a shortlist that included projects from Colombia, Italy, Lithuania, USA, UK and Chile, including Australia’s Big hART for their Secret Life of Sheds project.

Ngarra-burria participating composers with industry partners

Ngarra-burria participating composers with industry partners. (L-R) John Davis, Stephen Adams, composer Nardi Simpson, Kim Cunio, Claire Edwards, Chris Sainsbury, composer Tim Gray, composer James Henry, composer Troy Russell, Roland Peelman, composer Elizabeth Sheppard, Lamorna Nightingale. Image supplied

Established by composer Christopher Sainsbury in 2015/16, the Ngarra-burria program is a partnership between the ANU School of Music, Moogahlin Performing Arts, the Australian Music Centre and Ensemble Offspring, which aims to connect Indigenous composers with established classical composers and ensembles, and to more fully integrate Indigenous music into the classical repertoire. The composers featured over the years include Troy Russell, Brenda Gifford, Elizabeth Sheppard, Rhyan Clapham (Dobby), Tim Gray, Nardi Simpson, Eric Avery, Will Kepa, Marlene Cummins, Mark Ross (Munk), Aaron Wyatt and James Henry, with five new composers to be added in July 2022.

“Ngarra-burria” means “to listen to sing” in the language of the Dharug/Eora people of the Sydney region.

Ngarra-burria has had a significant impact on Australian music since its inception, with its composers having received commissions from major ensembles, festivals and organisations including Ensemble Offspring, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Sydney Living Museums, Canberra International Music Festival, Sydney Dance Company, Musica Viva, Sydney Festival, Melbourne Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, recording projects with ABC Classic, and major awards and residencies including the 2018-19 Create NSW Peter Sculthorpe Fellowship (Rhyan Clapham) and a 2022 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Residency (Brenda Gifford).

The ABC has also been a major supporter of the project. As part of its Fresh Start commissioning project, Ngarra-Burria Piyanna saw four First Nations composers – Clapham, Sheppard, Gray and Simpson – compose music to be performed on a 250-year-old piano, reflecting on 250 years of shared Indigenous and European history in Australia.

In March 2022 ABC Classic recorded an album with Ensemble Offspring featuring at least one piece by all of the composers that have come through the program thus far.

Claire Edwardes, Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring, told Limelight, “All the Ngarra-Burria partners and composers (and there are many) are so excited to have been awarded the 2022 Classical:NEXT Innovation Award! [It] really feels like some sort of miracle. This international recognition means so much.”

“The journey for us has been immense and the chamber repertory created in that time has also been huge. To be awarded the Classical:NEXT Innovation Award really does feel like recognition by our international community for the truly collaborative sense of cultural sharing that Ngarra-burria has at its heart.”

In a statement to Limelight after the award was announced, Christopher Sainsbury said:

“The Ngarra-burria program assists First Nations composers develop and emerge, connecting them to industry opportunities. In Australia ensembles, music organisations, festivals, schools of music, broadcasters like the ABC, and more, are making efforts to get it right pertaining to engagement with First Nations peoples and musicians. There is a growing recognition that there are quite a few First Nations composers and many more emerging. More than three dozen music groups have stepped up to work with them, but there is still room to grow and more uncomfortable shifts to make. For any music organisation it is pretty simple as far as we see it. If in the past you have been happy to commission and/or program non-Indigenous composers using aspects of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander culture in their works (perhaps using a story, a melody, borrowing language, borrowing from Aboriginal spirituality, copying Indigenous sounds, etc), then you are obliged to do so more for Indigenous composers now.”

“In the 1980s I was the only First Nations composer that I knew of, and today we have Rhyan Clapham, Nardi Simpson, Deborah Cheetham, William Barton, James Henry, Will Kepa, Troy Russell, Aaron Wyatt, Brenda Gifford, and the list goes on. There are about two dozen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander composers working in the classical arena who I am close to, so it stands to reason that there must be dozens more that would like to train and work in that space. And to receive the Classical:NEXT Innovation Award for 2022 represents the fact that the international classical and new music community have voted to support the enablement of our First Nations composers. So with that kind of endorsement the Australian classical music sector can perhaps look to us a little more. Some of these composers are developing quite a catalogue so perhaps ask about existing works, or commission new works, and just enjoy building relationships with First Nations composers and the sharing of culture that stems from that. It enriches us all.”

The Classical: NEXT Innovation Award is not the first award for Sainsbury and the program. Sainsbury was awarded the inaugural national Luminary Award at the 2020 Art Music Awards, with the judging panel writing in its citation, “Chris’s work over the past five years has had a national impact in both training emerging First Nations composers and redefining their role and future within Australian art music.”


You can read more about the Ngarra-burria: First Peoples Composers Program – including the ever-growing list of commissions, awards and achievements by the program’s alumni – on Sainsbury’s website. Limelight will be running a report from Classical: NEXT in the coming days.

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