During his Peggy Glanville-Hicks address Gill also challenged the nation’s major arts organisations to support Australian artists.

In his Peggy Glanville-Hicks address, given last week after the announcement of Natasha Anderson as the 2016 Glanville-Hicks Resident, celebrated conductor, composer and national champion of music education, Richard Gill, demanded that Australia should “take music education seriously.” The full transcript of his, the 17th annual Peggy Glanville-Hicks address, has now been published by the New Music Network and is also due to be broadcast by the ABC. In his passionate speech about the role of new music in society, Gill illuminated the essential need to support new compositions by Australian artists. In his address Gill also highlighted the areas of the artistic ecology of Australia which have failed to do enough to support new Australian music, including a direct challenge to Opera Australia’s Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini.

Pulling no punches, Gill began by shining a light on the failure of the major music organisations of Australia in actively supporting Australian composers by commissioning new work. He noted that “only 109 works were by Australian composers, or 4.68% out of 2332 works played by major orchestras in the two years to June 2011.”...