Hanzhong Kang wins Philip Neill Memorial Prize

Huge Congratulations to HanZhong Kang on winning the 2024 Philip Neill Memorial Prize for his piano trio piece, Drunk Light Dance (Han-Yin Method).

This year marks the 80th anniversary since the first composer, Douglas Lilburn, received this award in 1944 for his Prelude and Fugue in G Minor for organ.

The Prize was founded in 1943 in memory of the late Philip Foster Neill, by his sister. The late Mr Philip Neill was a medical student of the University of Otago, who died in 1943.

The Prize Selection Panel were highly complementary of HanZhong Kang’s Piano Trio, Drunk Light Dance (Han-Yin Method), stating: “This trio is dynamic and rhythmically lively, with good variety but also a sense of unity provided by the use of a single scale. It uses the instruments in imaginative ways, and is informed by an interesting programme.”

Congratulations HanZhong on your recent success.