Cellist Richard Narroway ‘13 was named winner of the Music Trust's 2020 Freedman Classical Fellowship. The prestigious $20,000 award is offered to an exceptional instrumentalist annually. 

The fellowship will enable Narroway to perform a post-COVID tour across Australia. He plans to perform ten Australian works for solo cello, some of them specially commissioned and some existing works by composers Elena Kats Chernin, Ross Edwards, Peter Sculthorpe, and Carl Vine.

A native of Australia, Narroway recently returned to his home country after ten years of study and performances in the United States. He studied cello with Hans Jensen at the Bienen School of Music and also received degrees from the Juilliard School and the University of Michigan. He has given performances across Australia, North America, Europe, and Asia, in prestigious venues such as the Kennedy Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Koerner Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. He is a member of the faculty at the Melbourne Conservatorium.

Narroway’s numerous competition titles include top prizes at the 2010 Stulberg International String Competition, Third Beijing International Cello Competition, and the Australian Youth Classical Music Competition. In 2010 he was named a recipient of the prestigious Australian Music Foundation Young Musician Award, an honor reserved for Australia’s most promising young artists.

A passionate advocate of new music, Narroway’s collaborative projects with composers have taken him all around the globe, resulting in premiere performances in the United States, China, Australia, and New Zealand. From 2016-18 he performed as part of the resident contemporary ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival, premiering dozens of new works. In 2018 he also became a founding member of the Four Corners Ensemble, a group dedicated to celebrating diversity through new music.

The Freedman Fellowship Awards are among the most prestigious offered to Australian musicians. They are awarded annually to a classical music instrumentalist and a jazz musician. The Freedman Classical Fellowship is managed by the Music Trust, administered and produced by Sydney Improvised Music Association, and funded by the Freedman Foundation