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'Campfire Australia': Charles Southwood to speak about national music broadcasting

September 27, 2006

cellist.jpgOne of Australia’s best-known classical music broadcasters – Charles Southwood – will give a public lecture in Armidale about the impact of national radio broadcasting on the performance of classical music throughout the country.

Mr Southwood, who retired on the 1st of September after 16 years as a program presenter on ABC Classic FM, will talk about the role that radio has played in forming and fostering a distinctively Australian culture of classical music.

The free lecture, titled “Campfire Australia: Fostering local tradition and regional practice in Western classical music for an entire country through radio”, will be at 12.30 pm on Friday 29 September in the Auditorium of Armidale’s C.B. Newling Building (the "Old Teachers’ College"). It is being presented in conjunction with the 2006 National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, co-hosted this year by the Society’s Northern NSW Chapter and The University of New England. The theme of the conference, being held in Armidale from Wednesday 27 September to Sunday 1 October, is “Music as local tradition and regional practice”.

“There’s something different and distinctive that we Aussies bring to classical music,” Mr Southwood said. “I’m interested in how a group such as the Australian Chamber Orchestra can make a European classic feel ‘Australian’, and how that can be illuminating for the rest of the world.”

“In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,” he continued, “there was a lot of anxious debate about the nature and expression of our Australian culture. One symptom of this was the composition of music that consciously strove to sound ‘Australian’. But then we discovered that, when you’re simply true to yourself, the national distinctiveness inevitably follows. In fact, we Australians are stuck with being original.”

He explained how the ABC’s national broadcasting of classical music had contributed to this developing consciousness of our distinctive voice at local and regional – as well as national – levels. “My experience has confirmed my belief that the best way for a radio station to foster musical culture in local communities is for it to be truly national,” he said.

Charles Southwood joined the ABC in Perth in 1978 as presenter of Radio 2’s “Morning Show”, which consisted largely of classical music. He moved to Adelaide in 1987 as presenter of ABC Radio National’s breakfast program “Early Edition” before joining, in 1990, the national classical music station then known as “ABC FM Stereo”.

For more information on Charles Southwood's lecture, phone (02) 6773 6563.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at September 27, 2006 12:15 PM