ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN YOUNG COMPOSER ACADEMY
AYCA was conceived and founded by Matt Klohs, a professional musician, composer, conductor and print music publisher with a 35-year professional career to date. Matt is privileged to work with a diverse team of professional Australian composers through his publishing business (www.mattklohs.com).
AYCA was born of an identified need for Secondary School student composers to have access to professional mentoring and guidance to further develop their skills and their love for composition. There are many thousands of young composers throughout Australia, but the vast majority will not be able to access ATAR (or equivalent) Composition as a subject of study. This is often because they are one of only a few students in their school with an interest in composition, or there is no composition specialist within their teacher cohort at school. For those that do have access to school tuition and the ATAR (or equivalent) composition program, the Academy provides for extra high-level mentoring that will build on and enhance the teaching already being received by the student in composition.
We at AYCA believe that the best people to mentor young composers are professional, published composers with significant industry experience who share a love of composition and a love of sharing their knowledge with others.
We have an amazing and diverse team of composer mentors and are proud of their desire to pass on their experience to young composers with a view to “futureproofing” the creation of new music here in Australia. This is a unique opportunity, and one we hope will be taken up by many hundreds of student composers throughout the coming years. (We all wished we had been able to access this mentoring when we were young composers).