Patrons

Dr Andrew Ford

Dr Andrew Ford has been a significant contributor and supporter of music and music education around Australia for many years. As a presenter, composer and advocate, ASME is thrilled that he is one of our long standing supporters and a patron of ASME. More information is available here.

Ford was a recipient of the Peggy Glanville-Hicks fellowship (1998–2000), and during this period, he began work on The Waltz Book, to a commission from the pianist Ian Munro. Recent works include Blitz (2011), for orchestra and recorded voices, premiered in Hobart by the Tasmania Symphony Orchestra under Marko Letonja, String Quartet No 5 performed nine times in 2013 by the Australian String Quartet, and the song cycle Last Words, commissioned by the soprano Jane Sheldon and first performed by her with the Seraphim Trio at the 2013 Port Fairy Spring Festival.

Last Words was named Vocal Work of the Year at the 2014 Australian Art Music Awards. Ford’s other prizes include the Yorkshire Arts Composers Award, which he won jointly with Mark-Anthony Turnage in 1982 (for Portraits), the Sydney Spring Festival award in 1998 (for Tattoo) and the 2002 Jean Bogan Prize (for The Waltz Book). In 2004, Learning to Howl received both the AMC award for the best composition by an Australian composer and the prestigious Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize; Tales of the Supernatural was named APRA vocal work of the year in 2005; Ford’s opera, Rembrandt’s Wife, to a libretto by Sue Smith, won a 2010 Victorian Green Room Award; and Rauha, for wind, brass, percussion, keyboards and double basses, won the 2012 Albert H. Maggs Award.

Ford has also won prizes for his writing about music, notably the Geraldine Pascall Prize for critical writing in 1998. He has published eight books, most recently Earth Dances: music in search of the primitive (2015), and has written and presented four acclaimed radio series, Illegal Harmonies (1997), Dots on the Landscape – an oral history of Australian music (2001), Music and Fashion (2005) and The Sound of Pictures(2007–10).

Lorraine Milne

Lorraine Milne has had a long association with music and music education across a variety of different settings and genres.

She has had extensive experience in the theatre as both a composer and stage manager. A founding member of the APG (Pram Factory) and Melbourne Writers Theatre, she has also worked at Playbox, La Mama, The Church, Organ Factory, VCA Drama School, Theatreworks, Athenaeum, Universal Theatre, Handspan, Polyglot, Perth, Flinders and Deakin Universities, Rusden Drama Department.

Milne has worked in the Artist in Schools program (song writing workshops), taught on the Experimental Teaching Program established by Max Cooke at the Faculty of Music (Melbourne University), produced an album of Australian folk songs with Denis Gibbons, toured with the Victorian Arts Council, been commissioned as a composer/lyricist by both the Yamaha Foundation and AMEB and played keyboard in various function bands.

Over the past decade or so Milne has been writing curriculum materials and presenting Professional Development courses for Musica Viva In Schools, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Opera House, Oz Opera and most recently the National Gallery of Victoria.

More information can be found here and also her more recent acclaimed work Maiden Voyage and other recordings are found at this site. ASME is honoured to have her as a patron for music education.