In 2019 the prize was awarded to Margaret Kartomi.

Margaret Kartomi
The IMS Directorium has chosen Margaret Kartomi to receive this award because of her lifetime record of outstanding research, her extraordinary service to the discipline of musicology, and her role as a teacher and mentor to a generation of scholars who have themselves had successful careers. Her name is known throughout the scholarly world for her contributions to ethnomusicology and passionate promotion of the discipline in the Asia-Pacific region. She has received many prestigious awards, in Australia, the USA, Asia, and Europe. She has served as president of the Musicological Society of Australia, and for a lengthy period as an IMS Directorium member. Moreover, she has recently been celebrated for fifty years continuous service at Monash University.

Concerning her research in Indonesia and South-East Asia, she has been a pioneer with regard to the music and culture of many different regions of Indonesia beyond Java, in Sumatra and Aceh and most recently in the Riau Islands. The IMS Directorium notes the breadth of her work, the variety and diversity of the perspectives from which she has viewed music and cultural experience. Beyond her contribution to the study of music in particular locations and regions, she has also made broader contributions to numerous theoretical areas of musicology, particularly her influential contribution to the theoretical understanding of musical instruments and organology, and other areas such as youth orchestras and performativity theory. The IMS Directorium also recognizes that her scholarly output has continued to be as prodigious now as it has been at any other point in her career.

One of her special attributes is her unflagging commitment to the discipline of musicology, whether through her international contributions or within her local environment. She is admired for promoting throughout her career a holistic notion of musicological training that took for granted the need for students to study the music of other cultures as well as their own. In her vision of ethnomusicological training she pioneered incorporating practical experience of Asian music traditions into the tertiary curriculum. Within Australia she has striven to implement her belief in the need for international collaboration to strengthen the discipline and has displayed outstanding leadership in organizing two Intercongressional IMS Symposia in Melbourne. She also spent an extended period as head of her own school during which she was the driving force in the transformation of a once exclusively academic department into a comprehensive music school. The IMS Directorium salutes her and sees her as a most worthy recipient of the IMS Guido Adler Prize.

Committee

Florence Gétreau (FR), Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl (AT), Christopher Reynolds (US, chair), Suk Won Yi (KR)

THIS PRIZE WAS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY
KATHRYN JOURDAN AND PAUL JOURDAN.