Brian Chatterton adds to South Australian music: ASQ, Jazz SA, jazz choir, concerts and Barossa Pilgrimages
Building on an already immense contribution to South Australian music, Brian Chatterton's involvedment continued in the 2st century will roles such as artistic director of the Adelaide Hills Summer Festival of Fine Music, featuring ensembles such as the Adelaide Hills Chamber Players (above) at Ukaria Cultural Centre concert hall, Mount Barker.
Images courtesy Adelaide Hills Chamber Players
Brian Chatterton, as head of performing arts at the South Australian College of Advanced Education and Adelaide University in the 1980s and early 1990s was a key factor in bringing new dimensions and entiities to the state’s music.
These included:
The Adelaide Connection: Adelaide’s first and most distinguished jazz choir was formed under the musical direction of English baritone John McKenzie after Salisbury and Adelaide colleges of advanced education amalgamated in 1982. Between 1985 and 1991, the Adelaide Connection had three highly successful LP/CDs recorded and distributed by ABC Records with associate artists Don Burrows, James Morrison and George Golla.
The Australian String Quartet (ASQ) was formed in 1986 as a resident professional ensemble at the South Australian College of Advanced Education. That year, as head of the college’s performing arts school, Chatterton offered founding members of the ASQ fractional teaching positions in the string programme of the college’s bachelor of music course. This triggered ASQ leader William Hennessey to secure matching funds from Arts SA and form the ensemble residing at the college. When the college’s performing arts school merged with the Elder Conservatorium to become the Adelaide University’s performing arts faculty in 1990, the quartet’s residency was preserved in the combined institution.
Friday Lunch Hour Concerts: As South Australian College of Advanced Education head of performing arts, Chatterton arranged a rich programmed of public concerts featuring resident performance staff and distinguished students. This included weekly lunch hour concerts in the Hartley Concert Room. After the merger with Adelaide University in 1990, this programme was kept. Lunch hour concerts had been a feature of Chatteron’s student years at the Elder Conservatorium but had lapsed for several years by 1990. They were revived in 1991 and their popularity grew rapidly. By 1992, they outgrew Hartley Concert Room and were transferred to the Elder Hall.
Jazz South Australia: Offering the only formal jazz training in South Australia, South Australian College of Advanced Education created healthy foundations for coordinated jazz activity in Adelaide. In 1985, Chatteron chaired a steering committee to start the South Australian jazz coordination scheme. This group represented around eight jazz interest groups from wider Adelaide. The state and federal governments agreed to support a jazz coordinator at the college from 1985.
Barossa Pilgrimages: For the 300th anniversary of the birth of J.S. Bach, the South Australian College of Advanced Education music staff took on the brainchild of South Australian “living treasure” Lyndall Hendrickson to celebrate Bach with a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Lutheranism in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. Chatterton chaired the organising committee for Barossa Pilgrimages, that had multiple buses carry multiple mobile audiences throughout the delightful Barossa countryside from small church to small church listening to instrumental and vocal mini-concerts accompanied by original 19th Century Lemke organs. Its huge success demanded it be repeated several years later.
Adelaide Festival Youth Orchestra: As part of the 1988 Adelaide Festival, Chatteron convened, coordinated and conducted in rehearsal the Adelaide Festival Youth Orchestra formed especially to provide orchestral workshops for Adelaide’s instrumental students under George Solti and Michael Tilson Thomas who performed in the Adelaide Festival that year with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.