Musical Life in Australia

Opportunities to study music in Australia are abundant. Some 35 institutions offer degrees in music, and many others offer tertiary instruction to a diploma level.

Although almost all of the degree-granting institutions have programs that are classical music-based, some specialise in one or another aspect of music. For instance, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) has the best program in musical theatre. Southern Cross University in the sub-tropical country town of Lismore, and the privately owned Australian Institute of Music in Sydney base their reputations on their degrees in the performance of popular music. Quite a number of institutions offer jazz programs, and some have programs in ethnomusicology or indigenous (Australian Aboriginal) music.

Many of the smaller programs are designed to train school music teachers, and may not have strong performance components. Some university music department programs follow the English precedent with programs that are academically-based - teaching musicology, ethnomusicology, theory and composition.

The largest performance institutions are probably (moving anti-clockwise from Perth in the west): University of Western Australia Department of Music, WAAPA/West Australian Conservatorium of Music, Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide, Tasmanian Conservatorium in Hobart (strong string program), Victorian College of the Arts School of Music, Melbourne University Faculty of Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Melbourne University Faculty of Music, and Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Brisbane. Also in Melbourne is the small Australian National Academy of Music, intended to educate the unusually talented.

The full list of institutions, except the University of Melbourne, can be found on the Music Council of Australia Website, under the Resources section: www.mca.org.au

It is important that while involved in music studies, students also immerse themselves in the musical life of the community. Naturally, this tends to be richer and more complex in larger cities, although there can be special opportunities in smaller centres too.

Here is a thumbnail sketch of the musical life of Australia:

Classical Music. Each of the state capital cities has at least one full-time convert orchestra. Sydney and Melbourne each have an opera and ballet orchestra. Sydney is the base for the Australian Chamber Orchestra ('This must be the best chamber orchestra on earth' said the London Times last year), and the Sydney Brandenburg Orchestra, an excellent baroque orchestra. Melbourne has a number of part-time professional orchestras with various program specialities, such as the Academy of Melbourne, and there are other part-time orchestras scattered around the country.

The youth orchestra movement is very strong, with year-round orchestras in all cities, and a virtuosic national orchestra that meets up once or twice a year and tours internationally. Youth orchestras usually accept members up to the age of 25. The choral movement is essentially non-professional, although there professional choirs are beginning to develop.

Musica Viva Australia is a very large chamber music presenter, which tours ensembles nationally, regionally and internationally. There is also a strong chamber music life independently of Musica Viva, more or less proportionate to population size.

There is a fairly strong early music scene. At the top level, standards are excellent, and generally improving in recent years. There is a rich contingent of ensembles specialising in new music, some of extraordinary accomplishment. Among these are The Song Company, a vocal sextet, and instrumental ensembles such as Elision, Sydney Alpha, Nova and many others.

Opera and Music Theatre. The national opera company, Opera Australia, is based in Sydney, where it offers two seasons a year (approximately eight months in total). It also performs in Melbourne for a long season. Opera Australia is one of the world's busiest opera companies.

There are provincial opera companies presenting four or five works a year in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. The Adelaide company is becoming a Wagner specialist, and is currently preparing a new production of The Ring Cycle.

Unfortunately, the Victorian State Opera in Melbourne collapsed financially a few years ago. Melbourne, however, is the base for Chamber Made Opera, the best funded contemporary music theatre company in the country, and also for OzOpera, a small touring company established by Opera Australia as a gesture to Melbourne after its own company disappeared. IHOS is based in Tasmania, and presents large-scale contemporary works created by its director, Con Koukias.

New Music Composition. Australian music composition came of age as recently as the 1960s. Australian composers work in considerable freedom from the informal, but powerful constraints felt by European composers, and there is a great variety in style. They are served by the Australian Music Center, a promoter of and repository for their music, and a good source of information about the scene in general. It can be found at info@amcoz.com.au

Jazz. The quality of the best jazz in Australia is very high, but the terms of its existence are marginal. In Sydney and Melbourne, you can hear plenty of jazz pretty much when you want to. In other cities, it's not as evidently on display. There is still a strong following for traditional jazz in Australia, and you tend to find this music in pubs and at jazz festivals. The city jazz clubs almost always present contemporary jazz, but there are more jazz festivals in Australia as a whole than any other type of arts festival. Often, these are in country towns, and mix traditional and contemporary programs.

Multicultural Music. 25% of the Australian population is comprised of people born elsewhere. While Britain has been a major source of immigrants, increasingly they are coming from other cultures - and unlike many other countries, Australia has actively sought immigrants, and has long encouraged multiculturalism rather than total cultural assimilation.

There is thus a very rich menu of immigrant musics and musical fusions of all kinds. Much of this has to be sought out, because it is actually located in ethnic social clubs and restaurants. But all the large cities have venues that present music from many cultures; also, musical experimentation involving ethnic musics can often be found in certain mainstream venues and festivals.

Folk Music. The traditional folk music of Australia is a variant of Anglo-Irish folk music, with lyrics that picture life in the harsh countryside of earlier years. In multicultural Australia, this is joined by the folk musics of later immigrant cultures. At present, folk music tends to be found mainly at folk music festivals, of which there are many. Some are giant, week-long affairs, of great interest and variety.

Popular Music. Australia is one of the great exporters of popular music, and the scene from which it emerges is various and strong. It tends to work local variations on innovations from elsewhere. Aboriginal musicians are active in rock and country music, and bring a distinctive flavour through both lyrics (often political) and performance style. The industry includes the full range of commercial entities - record companies (both majors and local independents), recording studios, distributors, presenters from arenas to small clubs, broadcasters free-to-air (public, private and community), cable and Internet, and so on. There are also government programs to assist in export promotion.

This brief description should help to orientate people wishing to participoate as students or performers of music in Australia. For additional information, there are detailed directories available, which can be found on the Music Council of Australia Website, www.mca.org.au. The Website also includes links to many Australian music institutions.

Author

Richard Letts
Executive Director
The Music Council of Australia

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