The Music Trust - Advocacy for Music in Education in Australia

Welcome to The Music Trust

The Music Trust was founded in October 2013. Its mission is stated in the banner. Key information can be found under ABOUT on the menu bar.

Check out the menu bar. MUSIC IN AUSTRALIA is a deep information source. EDUCATION is primarily about advocacy for school music and includes important research about its benefits. FREEDMAN is for the prestigious Freedman Music Fellowships. LOUDMOUTH takes you to the current edition of the Trust's monthly ezine.

Trust the music!

Jose Carbo’s CD, My Latin Heart

Watch Out for This!

What The Music Trust is doing

The Music Trust has redesigned its Music in Australia Knowledge Base. The information is presented in a new structure which enables readers to find all the articles pertaining to particular sets of activities in music in Australia – for instance, various spheres of music education, the relationship between music and current issues of social concern, performance in particular musical genres, the business of music, government interventions, Australian music in its international context. A new program of addition of articles begins in the second week of August.

The Music Trust has instigated and funded a composition competition for young people, to compose a song in support of climate action. The competition is being managed by Green Music Australia.

The Trust is also supported the Symphony for Life Foundation, which runs an ‘El Sistema’ style program for mostly young immigrant children in the Wentworthville area in Western Sydney. The program is free to the children. They attend two afternoons a week in normal times, are loaned instruments, given instrumental training and form into two small symphony orchestras of around 30 members each. During COVID, they are being taught online with weekly individual lessons.

The Music Trust is organising the Freedman Music Fellowships, now in their twentieth year. You can see the report in the centre column.

The Trust’s monthly online magazine, Loudmouth, has just published its 50th edition! See the contents for August summarised in the right hand column.

Freedman Music Fellowships

Rajiv Jayaweera at Freedman Jazz 2013.
Photo by Keith Saunders

Reporting at the beginning of August 2020. Four finalists have been chosen for the Freedman Classical Fellowship 2020: violinist Grace Clifford, violinist Harry Ward, cellist James Morley and cellist Richard Narroway. This is one of the strongest fields ever for the Fellowship, now in its 20th year.
Normally the winner is chosen at a concert of finalists. That was scheduled to take place on August 1 in the Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House. But social distancing rules closed the entire facility and all other concert venues. Various alternative scenarios have been adopted and given up. At this point we believe we have a strategy that will enable the winner to be chosen at the end of August. Watch this space, Loudmouth magazine and the Freedman Fellowship Facebook page.
The Freedman Jazz Fellowship is expected to be awarded in October. The sixteen nominees have sent in their applications and the judges are about to begin listening to the recordings and reading the project proposals. Since it is expected that it will not be possible to present a concert of finalists in October, the plan is to produce videos of each of the finalists, use the videos as part of the assessment process and then stream them in an online concert.

Thanks as always to funding from the Freedman Foundation, without which the Fellowships are not possible.

Freedman Music Fellowship information

Music in Australia Knowledge Base

The only knowledge base in the world that deals systematically with the music of an entire country. Facts in words and numbers about music in Australia – and discussions of key issues facing various areas of musical activity.

Music in Australia has been entirely redesigned. Navigation is very much clearer; you can easily see everything to be found on the Knowledge Base, organised into categories where everything available on each topic is laid out clearly. A program to add another 50 articles will begin in the second week of August, 2020.

Highlight, right click, go to www.musicinaustralia.org.au

Primary School Music Education

There is a lot of thought and research behind school music education advocacy.

ARGUMENT FOR SPECIALIST MUSIC TEACHERS. Primary school music education in many states is in crisis. Teachers are not educated to teach music and in the majority of schools in most states, there is not a classroom music program. After decades of neglect, The Music Trust believes that the only – and best – solution is the introduction into every classroom of a specialist music teacher. Read the reasoning here.
There is a new reassessment of the advocacy arguments. Look under EDUCATION > ADVOCACY ARGUMENTS.

RESEARCH SUMMARY. There is abundant research in music education showing that its benefits extend well beyond learning music skills to improvements in IQ, academic outcomes,confidence, empathy, social skills and more. Read a quick summary of these research outcomes here.