University Of Otago Student Selected As FAME Trust Emerging Practitioner Award Recipient

The Acorn Foundation and the trustees of the FAME Trust are pleased to announce the selection for the 2024 Emerging Practitioner Award recipient at the University of Otago. Seven promising students have been selected this year from top-rated performing arts schools in New Zealand to receive a $10,000 award.

Viola performer, composer, and musicologist Grace Shaw is this year’s recipient from the University of Otago. Grace is a very talented and intelligent performer, composer, and researcher, with a deep commitment to excellence and impressive creative achievements. Grace plays the viola with the Dunedin, Manukau, and Nelson Symphony Orchestras and is the principal violist of the Dunedin Youth Orchestra. Her compositions have been played by both the youth and senior orchestras in

Dunedin and were entered into the prestigious Lilburn Composition Competition. Professor Anthony Ritchie, head of the School of Performing Arts at the University of Otago, described Grace’s musical attributes.

“She is a well-rounded musician, and, in many ways, she represents the musician of the future, who is equally able to compose music, produce it, play it or articulate what it is about.”

Originally from South Canterbury, Grace will begin her first year of her research towards a PhD in Musicology in 2025, with her research focused on gender and race and how they impact representation and equality in the music industry in New Zealand. She aims to use her research to help empower underrepresented communities in the music industry, an ethos that she also strives for in her performance, where she strives to perform music written by women whenever possible.

Grace wrote, “As a musicologist, performer and composer, I empower and represent women in New Zealand’s music industry. My feminist and race-focused research promotes underrepresented women and minority artists, including Māori, challenging the oversaturation of white male artists and empowering marginalised individuals in the global music industry.”

This award will allow Grace to begin her PhD as she enriches the Dunedin and New Zealand music scenes through her musical talent and her research into how gender and race impact equality in the music industry across the country.

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