When music graduate Keith Humble returned to Melbourne to take up a lectureship in 1966, after a decade of avant-garde activity in Europe, he set up the Society for the Private Performance of New Music, providing a context for regular performances of experimental music held in the Grainger Museum. Humble set up the first electronic music studio for the Faculty in the early 1970s, which became a key part of the New Music programs. Between 1975 and 1979 Barry Conyngham (composer and former-Dean of the Faculty) created and led the New Audience series, with four or five concerts held per season in Melba Hall. Performed by a small group of students and staff, the concerts featured works by Keith Humble, George Dreyfus, Don Banks, and Peter Sculthorpe and were conceived as a way of getting new Australian music into a public forum.
While intervarsity jazz festivals had occurred from the 1960s, it wasn’t until the School of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts opened at Southbank in 1974, that improvisation and jazz found an institutional home in Melbourne. Melbourne University graduate Brian Brown was appointed as lecturer in post-1950’s music at the VCA in 1978 and established the renowned VCA Improvisation course in 1980. Experimental music takes many forms in the present day: in 2012 the Interactive Composition program was established at the VCA and later moved to the Conservatorium. It’s current staff and students work in collaborative cross-art modes of music and sound making and production for events, film & television, animation, theatre, music theatre, dance, pop song production, advertising, video gaming, installation art and sound design.
-
Ian Bonighton, Sleep [detail], 1968–69.
For 16-part choir and tape manuscript score Ian Bonighton completed his undergraduate degree in music at The University of Melbourne in 1968, before taking masters and doctoral degrees – all in composition – studying with Keith Humble. Bonighton’s PhD, the first awarded in composition at the faculty, focused on electronic music. In this graphic score for Sleep, the electronic tape sound is notated in a visual language at the bottom of the page. Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne. -
Paul Fletcher, Shed-post mini koto [detail], 2019.
Paul Fletcher (creator) born Melbourne 1962 wood, metal, plastic This experimental instrument was created by VCA lecturer Paul Fletcher for sound design and atmospheric improvised recordings. A cross between a miniature Japanese koto and a zither, the soundboard of this experimental instrument is a piece of timber from a shed post that was damaged in a bushfire on Fletcher’s property in rural Victoria. The instrument is played with the prepared Sunbeam iron activator. This instrument was used in an experimental performance event, Fabric Culture, at the Grainger Museum in 2019. On loan from the artist. -
Brian Brown OAM (designer), Victorian College of the Arts long sleeved t-shirt worn by Brian Brown, c.1995.
The logo on this shirt, celebrating the Victorian College of the Arts, was inspired by Brian Brown OAM, former head of Jazz and Improvisation at the VCA and legendary Australian Saxophonist. The design was created from a quick sketch Brown made about limitless possibility and “flight”, a concept central to the Jazz and Improv course he established in 1980. The VCA has been central to creative and contemporary music in Melbourne since the Music School was established in 1974. On loan from Robert Vincs. Photo: Christian Capurro
