APRA Professional Development Award Winners Announced

The winners of the massive APRA Professional Development Awards (PDA) were announced in Sydney this morning, with eight songwriters picking up $30,000 worth of prizes each in six different categories.

Three artists took out the much coveted prizes in the Popular Contemporary category this morning; first was the frontman and namesake of Melbourne indie folk band Husky, Husky Gawenda, this win adding to an enormous year and a bit that included releasing debut album Forever So and signing to Sub Pop.

Perth singer-songwriter Georgi Kay was another of the recipients of the award, she shot to fame recently after co-writing and singing on the ARIA award winning hit In My Mind alongside Ivan Gough and Feenixpawl.

The final winner was Brisbane's Thomas Calder, leader of indie group The Trouble With Templeton, a nice cherry in the lead up to the release of their debut LP in June of this year.

Leah Flanagan beat out some stiff competition to take out this year's PDA in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander category, she has gone from strength to strength since the release of 2010's Nirvana Nights and more and more people are beginning to cotton on to her immense talent.

The UTAS Stephen Schwartz Songwriting Award was won by Amali Ward, the singer and songwriter having come a hell of a long way since her stint on Australian Idol a number of years back.

He has played massive festival shows in Nashville, supported the likes of Taylor Swift, Brooks & Dunn and Glenn Frey and won the 2007 Telstra Road to Tamworth Grand Final, and today Newcastle's Morgan Evans notches up yet another career milestone by taking out the APRA PDA in the country category.

The classical award was won by multi-disciplinary sound artist Alexander Garsden, New York based, but Adelaide bred, Matthew Sheens picked up the prize in the jazz category and Joe Twist picked up the nod for the Film & Television category after a couple of well received scores to his name and plenty more on the burner.