Ensemble Offspring, Jane Sheldon and Handa Opera on the Harbour join an international longlist of creative luminaries.

Australian artists Ensemble Offspring, Handa Opera on the Harbour and Jane Sheldon are on the international longlist of nominees for the Classical:NEXT 2016 Innovation Award.

“This award aims to give international recognition to the people who are doing the most to push things forward with daring yet intelligent, effective and successful “out-of-the-box” thinking, planning and action,” says Jennifer Dautermann, Classical:NEXT director. “I firmly believe the time has come to add such a distinction to the list of already existing awards. As with Classical:NEXT itself, the Innovation Award is a democratic, community effort and a work-in-progress. This first year is a small beta-version, a prototype. It will be just the starting point and we hope to refine and expand it over the coming years.”

 Handa Opera on the Harbour’s 2015 production of Aida

Ensemble Offspring is Australia’s most notable new music ensemble, based in Sydney. Led by Artistic Director and acclaimed percussionist, Claire Edwardes, they are dedicated to promoting diverse and emerging music practices that expose audiences to new ways of experiencing sound, and have premiered more than 100 new works in their annual programs of over 30 concerts each year. The ensemble, consisting of Lamorna Nightingale (flute), Jason Noble (clarinet), Veronique Serret and James Cuddeford (violins), Bree van Reyk (drum kit and percussion), and Zubin Kanga (piano), celebrated their 20th birthday last year, and started their 2016 season with a collaboration with the Australian Art Orchestra presenting premieres of new works by celebrated young composer-pianists Austin Buckett and Simon James Phillips.

Handa Opera on the Harbour is one of Australia’s most popular annual fixtures, uniting world-class opera, dining, sunsets and grand spectacle on Sydney’s Harbour each year. In 2015, Verdi’s Egyptian epic, Aida, directed by Gale Edwards with set and costume design by Mark Thompson and choreography by Lucas Jervies, dazzled thousands of opera lovers during its two month season. In 2016, Handa Opera on the Harbour will presents Turandot under the direction of Chen Shi-Zheng, whose approach fuses Chinese and Western artistic approaches.

Jane Sheldon

Soprano Jane Sheldon was born in Australia, but is now based in New York, where the New York Times praised her for singing “sublimely”. She specialises in early music as well as the creation and performance of new works and has appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera, Boston Camerata, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Halcyon, the Song Company, Synergy Percussion and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. In 2015, she was appointed Artistic Associate of Sydney Chamber Opera, and her album North + South was nominated for Best Classical Album of 2013 at Australia’s ARIA awards.

A shortlist will be chosen from the international longlist, before the winners for 2016 are determined by an online vote from the 3000-strong Classical:NEXT community. The winner of the Classical:NEXT 2016 Innovation Award will be announced on 28 May at the closing ceremony of Classical:NEXT in Rotterdam.

A list of the complete longlist is available on the Classical:NEXT website.