Amy Dickson

Born in Sydney during 1982, saxophonist Amy Dickson began lessons on the instrument at the age of six. A childhood surrounded by wide-ranging musical influences led to her concerto debut at sixteen, when she performed the Dubois Concerto alongside Henryk Pisarek and the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra, later earning the James Fairfax Australian Young Artist of the Year award. On her eighteenth birthday she recorded the Dubois Divertissement with John Harding and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The next year she relocated to London on the Jane Melber Scholarship, pursuing studies at the Royal College of Music under Kyle Horch and at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Arno Bornkamp. There she became the first saxophonist awarded the Gold Medal at the Royal Overseas League Competition, as well as the Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Competition and the Prince’s Prize. Between 2005 and 2011 she refined her distinctive saxophone approach through appearances at leading international venues and festivals. Those engagements preceded the 2008 release of her debut album Smile, whose sultry, dynamic yet subtle phrasing drew critical acclaim. Seeking to weave classical foundations more explicitly into her output, she issued the 2009 album Glass, Tavener, Nyman, presenting her own interpretations and arrangements of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1, John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil, and Michael Nyman’s Where the Bee Dances, which met with broad praise. Blending contemporary classical elements with traces of jazz, she cultivated a growing audience that peaked with the chart-topping 2013 album Dusk and Dawn, a collection of classical and jazz standards that established her among the decade’s most compelling contemporary classical figures. The 2014 releases Catch Me If You Can and A Summer Place drew on film-score repertoire, one of the avenues through which she broadens the saxophone canon and engages listeners. Another route involves commissioning and premiering works for chamber ensemble or saxophone and orchestra from composers including Ross Edwards, Peter Sculthorpe, Graham Fitkin, Steve Martland, and Huw Watkins; several of the Australian commissions appear on her 2016 album Island Songs. In 2017 she returned with her sixth album, Glass, followed in 2019 by the seventh, In Circles.