ASME Vic – Capturing Voices Project

Our Capturing Voices Project is a way to celebrate the remarkable stories, perspectives, and contributions of eminent music educators.

Educating for Life Awards 2023

The ASME Educating for Life Awards are presented to outstanding music educators employed in one or more of early childhood, primary, secondary, or special education in the government or non-government sector, with a minimum of three years’ experience.

The award focusses on the applicant’s exceptional contribution to the provision of quality music education in the context within which she/he is working, as demonstrated by the following criteria:

• Effectiveness and innovation in enabling development of new musical understandings that build on and enrich pupils’ knowledge, skills and attitudes in music
• Teaching approaches that cater for diverse needs and backgrounds
• Working collaboratively with other teachers and providers of music learning to improve outcomes for pupils

Peter Sharp

Peter has taught for over 30 years at Frankston High School, having begun there part-time in the early 1990s. During this time he has led and developed a substantial music department.

With Peter at the helm, and support from school administration and a range of instrumental teachers, the music department has grown from strength to strength, developing 4 concert bands, three stage bands, and numerous smaller ensembles. 

Peter has connected with Frankston Rotary, Frankston Council, and the Frankston Susono Friendship Association. This work paved the way for bi-lateral music exchanges between Susono (Japan) and Frankston, with numerous international trips for students, including a 10-day five city tour of Japan by the Frankston High School Senior Stage Band, which included a performance at World Expo 2005 in Nagoya

Peter has regularly taken bands to the Melbourne Bands Festival (now Victorian Schools Music Festival), along with the annual pilgrimage of the Frankston HS stage bands to Mt Gambier for Generations in Jazz – for which he was often the bus driver!

Thirty years since he first began there, Peter currently is still Head of Department at Frankston High School. Having seen the ushering in of computers, VIT, data driven teaching, his quality of teaching and connecting with so many students, teachers, community bands and ensembles over the years are many facets to the exceptional, enduring and passionate contribution Peter has made to Frankston high School, the City of Frankston, and music education in Victoria. 

 

Claudia Barker

 

Claudia Barker has made an extraordinary contribution of music and music education across many decades. For more than 50 years she taught music at Kooweerup Secondary College where the school named the Claudia Barker Performing Arts Centre in her honour.

She has impacted on many aspects of school and community life.

In 1998 she formed the college marching band and entered them into the Anzac Day march in Melbourne. They have marched in the Anzac Day commemorations every year since. She has been a tireless advocate for music and its place in the school and community.

Claudia was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community through a range of musical organisations, ABODA Life Membership, and is in the aMuse Music Education Hall of Fame.

Some of Claudia’s career highlights include:

• In 1965 she appointed as the only music teacher at Koo Wee Rup High School. In 2023 the program has grown to include 10 music staff  
• In 1982 started the school’s senior band program
• In 1998 instigated the Koo Wee Rup SC College marching band. The band has attended the Melbourne ANZAC march since 1999 and leads the 39th Battalion annually in the march
• In 2002, the Claudia Barker Performing Arts Centre was named in her honour, the same year she became a leading teacher.
• 2012 Koo Wee Rup Secondary Band tour to the UK where the highlight was performing in Westminster Abbey
• 50 performances at music festivals
• 38 school musicals
• 56 years teaching at the Koo Wee Rup SC, during which time she resigned three times in order to grow her family of six children.

Claudia has been recognised through the following awards:

2017 Life Membership of ABODA Victoria

2017 Recognition of Service to Victorian Education award for 40 years of service

2019 Medal of the Order of Australia

2022 Association of Music Educators (Vic) Music Education Hall of Fame.

 

ASME Life Membership 2023

Honorary Life Membership is reserved as an honour, bestowed by ASME, in recognition of an individual’s outstanding contribution to music education. It is ASME’s highest accolade. 

Chapters can nominate individuals in recognition of service to a Chapter Council and distinguished service to music education in the relevant state or territory. 

Dr Neryl Jeanneret

Dr Neryl Jeanneret retired from The University of Melbourne in 2021 and maintains the honorary position of Principal Fellow. Throughout her career Neryl has worked tirelessly with ASME at both national and chapter level including as:

• ASME National President 
• Council Member, NSW Chapter 
• Council Member, Victorian Chapter 
• Member of the Editorial Boards for the Australian Journal of Music Education and Victorian Journal of Music Education 
• Convenor of the ASME XII National Conference (Sydney, 1999)
• ASME representative on the Steering Committee for the National Review of School Music Education (2004-2006) 
• Awarded Fellowship of the Australian Society for Music Education in 2011.

Neryl’s career has included:

• Head of Music Education, Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne 2005 to 2021, where she also held the position of Associate Dean (Research Training) from 2012 to 2015. 
• Senior Lecturer and Director in the Professional Experience Unit, School of Education at the University of Newcastle and before this she was Curriculum Consultant & Ministerial Advisor: Music K–12 with the NSW Dept of Education after working as a high school music specialist in Sydney high schools.
• Work with the Australian Music Centre and ASME from 2005 until 2016 to produce teaching kits focussing on the ASME conference commissioned work and other Australian works of note.
• Adviser and writer to the NSW Department of Education, the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW, the DET, Victoria, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the South Australian Department of Education and Training. 

 

FASME Awards 2023

Fellowship of the Australian Society for Music Education (FASME) was ratified by National Council 2005.

ASME Fellowship is a recognition of outstanding and distinctive contributions to the advancement of music education.

The recipient is eligible to use the acronym (FASME) after their name and qualifications. 

 

Helen Champion

Helen has led the development and implementation of arts and music curricula through her roles as Curriculum Manager, Performing Arts P-12 with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (1998 – 2018), and as Curriculum Specialist with ACARA (2018-2022)

Helen’s sustained level of commitment and dedication to detail has resulted in producing the curricula followed by every government and Catholic school in Victoria, and all schools nationwide.

She has a reputation as a generous leader who makes herself available to all who rely on her sage advice to clarify and to educate. She is known for her prompt and detailed responses to questions, and willingness to present at subject association conferences, VCE conferences, pre-service teacher lectures and teacher networks.

Since stepping away from her work with ACARA Helen has embarked in a PhD and works as a freelance curriculum consultant. Her legacy in Australian music education is immense and profound having impacted every primary and secondary school in the country.

 

Dawn Joseph

Dawn is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University

Dawn is recognised locally and internationally in her focus areas of music education, African music, multicultural music community music, and ageing and wellbeing in the Arts. Her main focus has been on bringing multi-cultural music in its widest forms into teacher education and the classroom. 

An active member of the Victorian Chapter of ASME serving as Chair for two terms and Deputy Chair, as well as participating in National Council. She has also been involved in numerous aspects of ISME and The Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education. 

Dawn is a prolific publisher across the fields of her research. She is also a respected editorial Board member of many journals including International Journal of Multicultural Education, International Journal of Music Education, International Journal of Higher Education, Teacher Development: An International Journal of Teacher Professional Development, Australian Journal of Music Education, Victorian Journal of Music Education, Australian Online Journal of Arts Education.

 

Robin Stevens

Robin was formerly Associate Professor of Music Education in the Faculty of Education at Deakin University, Burwood Campus. He is currently a Principal Fellow in the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at The University of Melbourne

Robin’s focus has been on history of music education and the application of computer technology to music teaching and learning, and his contribution in both fields has been outstanding. A particular focus of research has been on the promotion of the Tonic Sol-fa pedagogical and notational methods and on the life histories of prominent Australian music educators. 

Robin has had extensive involvement in publications, member of the Editorial Boards of several international scholarly journals. He has held positions with various associations including president of the Australian Association for Research in Music Education, Chairperson of ASME (Victoria) and a member of ASME National Council, and a member of the Board of Directors of the AMEB in Victoria (1993-2007). As well, he was a member of the Steering Committee for the National Review of School Music Education (2004-05), and of the Australian Government’s Music Education Advisory Group (member 2007-08 and chairperson 2008-09). 

In 2014 Robin was inducted into the Music Education Hall of Fame of the Association of Music Educators (Victoria).

 

Leon de Bruin

The final FASME honour was bestowed on outgoing ASME National President, Leon de Bruin. Having completed two years as National Vice President and two years as National President, Leon now moves into the position of Immediate Past President.

Leon’s FASME was celebrated at the ASME National Award ceremony at the close of the Sydney conference this year.

 

Lorraine Milne in Conversation with Dr Ros McMillian

An interview with Lorraine Milne, ASME Patron, by Dr Ros McMillian, ASME Honorary life Member was held on the 18th September 2022 at the ASME Afternoon event held at the Kent Hotel Upstairs.

Click here to download the Audio of Lorraine Milne in Conversation with Ros McMillian.

ASME Honorary Life Members 2022

Honorary Life Memberships to were presented to Dr Jane Southcott, Mandy Stefanakis & Michael Travers at An ASME Afternoon.

Michael Travers

Audio of Mick Traver’s acceptance speech – September 18, 2022

Michael has made a significant contribution to music education in Australia.  Not only is he an engaging classroom teacher, he is also a workshop leader and composer, his compositions always involving an extraordinarily diverse cohort of performers and audiences.

Michael’s creations include several musicals written specially for his school, St Matthew’s Primary in Fawkner North, and whose students represent over two dozen nationalities.  Every student is involved in the musicals which are staged every two years and that also utilise the skills of the staff, including the classroom teachers. They include ‘Antarctica’, with its focus on ecological awareness and ‘The Visitor’, where a strange visitor is encouraged to learn the F-6 History curriculum through drama and song.  Michael’s most widely acknowledged school musical is ‘An Act of Parliament’ which was performed in the Queen’s Hall in Victoria’s Parliament House and that also included musicians from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Police in Schools Program.  His best-known composition is the song The Last Anzac, which was premiered in 2005 at the ANZAC Day AFL match commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing.

Michael’s contribution to ASME has been significant.  In 2007 he was awarded both the Herald-Sun’s Victorian Primary Teacher of the Year and an ASME National Award for Excellence in Music Education.  As a consequence he was invited to attend an ASME meeting that year and to join the Council.  In the 15 years since then he has held the positions of Chair, Secretary and Treasurer and has been the force behind the Chapter’s focus on creative music-making in schools.

Mandy Stefanakis

Audio of Mary Stefanakis’ acceptance speech – September 18, 2022

Mandy Stefanakis has a long record of service to music education in Australia.  She has been head of music at both primary and secondary schools and taught generalist and specialist teacher trainees at Melbourne and Deakin Universities.  Her teaching experience was captured in her set of highly engaging school music texts, Turn it Up!, published by McGraw-Hill.  In these she demonstrated her spectacularly wide knowledge of a range of musical styles, an attribute that is reflected in her many original compositions for school ensembles as well as piano and orchestral music.

Of particular importance has been Mandy’s contribution to arts curriculum initiatives, including VCAA (the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority), Musica Viva in Schools and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.  She is an honorary life member and former president of aMuse, a member of the Advisory Council of the Music Trust and deputy editor of Australia’s foremost online music publication LoudMouth.  

Mandy has conducted extensive interviews with musicians and filmmakers for the National Film and Sound Archive and recently submitted her PhD, which investigated the concept of ‘composer self’.   Through interviews with 15 Australian composers, who write in a range of musical genres, they were asked to identify two of the pieces they felt particularly represented their selves.  From these works and the spoken words of the composers, she found that all had a distinctive personal aesthetic or ‘sound print’ within their oeuvre.  Her research notes the importance of a personal musical voice in creative music-making, something about which she is passionate, particularly in school music-making.

Jane Southcott

Audio Jane Southcot’s acceptance speech – September 18, 2023

Jane is a professor in the Education Faculty at Monash University.  Her major research is the history of music education, not only that of Australia but also of America and Europe.  She is the ‘go-to’ person for any query on when things happened, who initiated what, and where you would find information regarding music education.

Of particular importance for Australian music education has been her supervision of post-graduate students.  Jane has supervised more than fifty successful PhDs and currently has over a dozen more students undertaking this degree – an achievement that has rarely been matched by any other Australian academic.  A former PhD student noted that Jane invests as much enthusiasm and support in her novice researchers as she does in her PhD candidates and that supervision sessions were always highly constructive and enjoyable.  For this ex-student Jane’s most notable attribute was her versatility, shown in the way she could take on a breadth of subjects and become an expert in those fields, in addition to her own areas of research.  She was, to quote, “simply fabulous”.

Jane’s contribution to music education has been more than just her academic work, however.  She has been a member of ASME for 50 years, including Chair of the South Australian Chapter for several years, and she has presented at many State and National Conferences.  She is also a long-standing member of ANZARME (the Australian and New Zealand Association for Research in Music Education) and is its current President.  As if this was not enough to keep her busy, Jane is also the Co-editor of ISME’s International Journal of Music Education.