Dr Sam Gill, one of our distinguished saxophone and clarinet teachers, has been awarded the 2025 Freedman Fellowship. The Freedman Fellowship is a major award for emerging jazz artists in Australia, prestigious and highly competitive. Sam was selected as the winner from among three finalists who played live at Pier 2/3, the ACO’s Sydney HQ last Saturday night. This final round of performances was described by Limelight Magazine as “fiercely competitive”.
First launched in 2001, the Freedman Fellowship was created by Laurence and Kathy Freedman, together with Richard Letts, as a way to support the next generation of outstanding young Australian musicians. Although the Fellowship originally covered both jazz and classical music, a major review in 2024 refocused the program exclusively on jazz—strengthening its role as a springboard for creative, ambitious improvisers.
Sam Gill is the latest of several JWA people who have numbered among the select group of artists who have been supported through the Fellowship since its inception. Emma Stephenson (Freedman Fellow, 2017) and Hilary Geddes (2021) were both students at Jazz Workshop Australia while Kristin Berardi (2007) and Novak Manojlovic (2019) were teachers at JWA.
The Freedman Fellowship includes a $30,000 award to be used for a major musical project by the recipient. We congratulate Dr Gill along with the other finalists Holli Scott, Niran Dasika, and Wilbur Whitta.
