GEORGINA PALMER

Georgina Palmer is a New Zealand composer, currently in her final year of Honours study at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Her notable career highlights to date include winning the 2020 SOUNZ NZCF Choral Composition Competition, winning the 2022 Audrey Reid Orchestra Composition Prize, having a work performed by the National Youth Brass Band of NZ, having a work performed in the Celebrating Global Harmony Through Music concert at Carnegie Hall in December 2022, and (more recently) winning the 2024 RSCM Harold Smart Composition Prize. She was the Emerging Composer for the 2023 At The World's Edge Classical Music Festival in Queenstown, NZ, and was a recent participant in the 2025 Vienna Contemporary Composers' Festival. Scroll down to read her full biography.

Georgina Palmer is a 22-year-old New Zealand composer, currently in her final year of tertiary composition study at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

She began piano lessons in 2008 at the age of six and started composing small piano works shortly thereafter (performing the first of these in a local performing arts competition at the age of seven). Her involvement with music continued throughout school; after beginning violin and percussion tuition in 2016, she became involved with a variety of school music ensembles, including choirs, jazz bands, rock bands and multiple award-winning chamber music groups. Georgina credits her final two years of schooling – at Nelson College for Girls – as the most significant to her musical development; whilst there Georgina won the SOUNZ Big Sing Choral Composition Competition with her work A Music Everywhere, which has since been performed and broadcasted several times around Aotearoa. A Music Everywhere was part of a portfolio of three works that Georgina submitted for the NZQA Scholarship Music awards in late 2020; she received an Outstanding result – the highest possible mark nationwide. She also attained Distinction for her ATCL Diploma on Piano the following year.

Georgina has received a number of commissions from a variety of ensembles, including acclaimed violinist Rakuto Kurano (for whom she wrote A Day In The Village) and The National Youth Brass Band of New Zealand (for whom she rearranged A Music Everywhere; Georgina also played percussion with the Band in 2021). She was also the 2022 recipient of the Audrey Reid Composition Prize for A Grand Adventure and performed percussion in the work’s premiere at Dunedin Town Hall in September 2022.

Image by Jesse Fletcher, March 2025.

Outside of commissioned pieces, Georgina is actively involved in the rehearsing, performing and conducting of performances of her work, both in New Zealand and internationally. This includes the performance of Upon Clee Hill (a string orchestra work dedicated to her paternal grandparents) at Carnegie Hall in New York City in December 2022. She has also conducted performances of her work by the Newport Strings Group and CHIME Choir, among other Melbourne-based ensembles by whom she has been commissioned. Also, upon moving to Melbourne, Georgina’s interest in sacred choral music began to flourish, leading her to compose Te Lucis Ante Terminum in collaboration the prestigious University of Melbourne Trinity College Choir (who gave its premiere in September 2023); this work was also performed by the Wellington Youth Choir in May 2024 as part of Huakina (a concert celebrating young composers from Aotearoa).

In October 2023, Georgina attended the fortnight-long AWE (At the World’s Edge) classical music festival in Queenstown, New Zealand as the Emerging Composer-In-Residence. After being selected for the residency in May that year, she composed a new work – Maramataka – for French Horn, violin and cello under the mentorship of prominent New Zealand composer Salina Fisher (via Zoom). The work was debuted at the festival by acclaimed London-based French Horn player Ben Goldscheider, along with two of the festival’s Emerging Artists: Lorna Zhang (violin) and Damon Herlihy-O’Brien (cello). She regards her time at the festival as one of the most important experiences of her blossoming composing career to date, given the wealth of networking and personal development opportunities that came with the residency.

At university, Georgina continues to be involved in a variety of music projects, including joint-winning the Sutherland Trio Composition Prize with fellow composer and classmate Bryn Renard (for her piano trio, Emerge), and partaking in the annual Montsalvat Choral Festival (for which she wrote The Gift To Sing for The Casey Choir, and The World Around Us for the Melbourne Women’s Choir). In April 2024, she collaborated with Renard and fellow Melbourne Conservatorium of Music composer Xiaole Zhan to create comma means breathe, a new music concert highlighting the relationship between words, music, and local young adults’ perspectives on the world. Her main contribution to this concert was To Be At Peace, a short chamber work that uses text from fellow university students and explores themes around safety and comfort among youth.

In the second half of 2024, Georgina completed an original score for the short animated psychological-drama film You Are Not Asleep by Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) student Amelie Salinas, working in collaboration with sound designer and fellow VCA student Ella Dawson. Shortly thereafter, Georgina was commissioned by Victoria's premier A-Grade competitive brass band, Darebin-Preston City Brass (with whom she plays percussion), for their 90th Anniversary in 2024; for this, she wrote Spiritus Aeris (The Spirit of Brass), and she performed in its informal premiere at Federation Square in Melbourne in November 2024.

At the beginning of 2025, Georgina was selected as the joint winner of the annual Harold Smart Memorial Composition Prize in the UK, with her sacred choral work With Faith and Hope Eternal. Around this time, she was also selected as a finalist in the 2025 SOUNZ Brass Composition Prize, with her solo cornet work Terra Nullius. She also collaborated with young film director and colleague Talia Frank (UC Santa Barbara Class of ‘25) to create the score for Frank’s nature documentary Crossing The Divide; another collaboration with Frank is underway, set to be premiered later in 2025.

Upon commencing her Honours year of study, Georgina was selected to participate in the acclaimed Vienna Contemporary Composers’ Festival with around twenty other young composers from across the world; in June 2025, she undertook this two-week residency programme in Vienna, Austria, and whilst there her first string quartet – Coming of Age – was debuted by the Mivos Quartet in the Mozarthaus recital hall. The Festival allowed Georgina to connect with fellow young composers from across the world – beyond Australia and New Zealand – and learn from a variety of international composition faculty in the beautiful setting of Vienna; this experience is one Georgina is incredibly grateful for, and she will carry forward the memories made and insights gained from her time in Vienna throughout her career.

Georgina also composed her first symphony, Whakamahara, in early 2025 as part of the County Hall Arts Peace Symphony Concours programme (based in London). Further in Georgina’s large-scale compositional repertoire, her latest orchestral work – Flourish – will be performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in September 2025 as part of the prestigious Todd Young Composer of the Year Awards in Wellington. She is delighted to be selected as a finalist for the Awards this year.

Georgina continues to be a regular ambassador for the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at both online and in-person events, and was recently involved in an eighteen-month-long internship as a broadcasting assistant at Melbourne’s classical music radio station, 3MBS. She is excited to continue working with a variety of ensembles and performance contexts in the future, as well as continuing her involvement with other arts-related work in New Zealand, Australia, and across the world. She wishes to thank her family, friends and colleagues in their incredible support of her creative journey over the years, and looks forward to what’s to come next.