Dudley Benson Receives New Generation Award

Dudley Benson Receives New Generation Award

Golden Retriever Records is proud to share that Dunedin-based musician Dudley Benson has received a New Generation Award at the 2014 Westpac New Zealand Arts Awards. An annual event, this year's ceremony took place on Monday evening at Sky City Theatre, Auckland, honouring three New Generation Awards winners and five Laureate Awards.

Dudley was advised several months ago by Arts Foundation Executive Director, Simon Bowden and was only able to publicly share news of his Award following an official announcement at the ceremony tonight. The Awards come as a total surprise to the winning artists, who are selected without application by a small panel.

The award comes with a cash donation of $25,000.

"I'm hugely grateful for this award," says Benson. "I think it's often the younger and somewhat still evolving artists who help push things forward, and it's an honour to have my music acknowledged in this way and among the other winners."

Other recipients of the New Generation Award were actor & director duo Vela Manusaute and Anapela Polataivao (Theatre), and painter Star Gossage (Visual Arts). Laureate Awards Winners were actor & producer Cliff Curtis (film), multi-disciplinary artist Lisa Reihana (visual arts), poet Goeff Cochrane (literature), composer Ross Harris (music), and choreographer & director Charles Koroneho. Each Laureate winner received a cash donation of $50,000.

This week Dudley released Deforestation (listen here), a new benefit album of remixes of songs from his Taite Prize nominated 2010 album Forest: Songs by Hirini Melbourne. Deforestation features re-workings by international and local contributors including Matmos (US), Barbara Morgenstern (Germany), Vashti Bunyan (UK), Stef Animal (NZ) and Dame Anne Salmond (NZ), with all sales profit given to the Ulva Island Charitable Trust. Since 2006 the Christchurch-born, former boy chorister has released two critically-acclaimed albums (The Awakening, 2008),Forest, 2010), three EPs and performed both large-scale nationwide tours through cathedrals, community halls and mare, as well as a recent series of solo club shows in Japan, Wellington and Auckland. He is currently recording his third album.

ENDS

© Scoop Media