The local classical music community is up in arms about the recent round of ARIA wins. Many have taken the ARIAs to task for handing the award for Best Classical Album to Australian electronic duo Flight Facilities.
The nominations for the 2016 ARIA Awards were announced earlier this week along with the winners for the Fine Arts and Artisan wards. Flight Facilities were nominated for their collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
“We’re stoked to be nominated for best classical album a year after being nominated for best dance — we don’t know how but thanks very much,” said Hugo Gruzman, one half of the Sydney electronic duo.
Indeed, many in the Australian classical community are a bit fuzzy on just how Flight Facilities nabbed the Best Classical ARIA. According to Fairfax, Flight Fac alone received the award as the MSO was not included in the nomination.
“The album consists of Flight Facilities’ original electronic music with the accompaniment of an orchestra,” Toby Chadd, manager of ABC Classics, told The Australian.
“It feels like something is potentially wrong with the ARIA system to allow an album whose credentials are clearly in no way classical to win the classical award. It has the potential to damage the integrity of that award.”
Many feel that handing the award to an album that is essentially an electronic dance music album with orchestral elements undermines the Best Classical Album category and has robbed a classical artist of an important accolade.
However, an ARIA representative informed The Australian that the “creative collaboration” between Flight Fac and the MSO met eligibility criteria for the award and the winner was determined by a “specialist classic music ARIA judging panel”.
Speaking to Fairfax, ARIA CEO Dan Rosen was unapologetic about the Flight Fac win. According to Rosen, the ARIA Awards are “self-policing”, with each category left to its own devices in deciding what’s eligible for their own category.
“If a judging school, because they’re experts, don’t feel that [an album] is worthy of that genre then they don’t vote for it,” he said. It’s also worth noting that the artists and labels get to decide which category they submit themselves to.
For example, Josh Pyke’s collaboration with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra would’ve been eligible for Best Classical Album, but it was instead submitted to, and won, the Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album award.
“Very simply, we didn’t put it in Best Classical because it isn’t a classical album, so we didn’t feel it was the right fit for that category. I’m sure we could have done that if we chose to, but out of respect to the classical community it didn’t feel right,” Pyke’s manager told Fairfax.
“It seems odd not to have those [criteria] for the awards which you would have thought you want to safeguard much more assiduously than the charts perhaps,” Toby Chadd told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“The ARIA Awards, if we are to hold them up as the central moment when we celebrate the best of Australian recorded music, is important enough to take it seriously enough that you would place safeguards around it.”
As far as Chadd’s concerned, Flight Facilities winning the Best Classical Album award is equivalent to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra being awarded the Best Dance Album award for their ‘creative collaboration’ with Flight Facilities.
