Australia’s most prestigious awards for new classical music, the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards announced their list of finalists today, at the same time as announcing a new partnership with Limelight Magazine, as the 2014 awards sponsor.

Limelight is passionate about classical and art music, and we are proud to support these iconic awards as they form an integral part of the Australian music landscape and highlight great achievements by leading professionals within the artform,” says Publisher Andrew Batt-Rawden. Established and up-and-coming composers are recognised across 11 categories, which span contemporary classical, jazz and experimental music.

Canberra-born Mary Finsterer heads the list of nominations being recognised for her double bass concerto, Lake Ice, which was premiered last year by Kees Boersma and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The concerto is up for orchestral work of the year against Brett Dean’s The Last Days of Socrates (as performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Peter Coleman-Wright and Simone Young), Nigel Westlake and Lior’s popular hit Compassion and James Ledger’s violin concerto, Golden Years as premiered by Margaret Blades and WASO.

Composer, conductor and violist Brett Dean also gets the nod for performance of the year for Socrates where he’s up against Finsterer again, Matthew Hindson’s Second String Quartet as...