Generations in Jazz, a Mount Gambier schools music institution, gets government funding for permanent pavilions

James Morrison, conducting and inset, took over running Mount Gambier's Generations of Jazz festival and set up the southeast South Australian city's music academy before it closed in 2021.

Mount Gambier, in South Australia’s southeast, became Australia’s jazz music epicentre each May when the city staged the largest youth jam session: Generations in Jazz.

In 2024, the South Australian government announced $720,000 funding to construct four permanent structured pavilions on a parcel of land owned by Generations in Jazz at OB Flat deliver significant savings to event organisers of about $100,000 per event. When not required for Generations in Jazz, the pavilions could be  repurposed as storage for caravans, motorhomes and boats. The savings and additional revenue from storage were expected to reap event organisers $150,000 each year to be reinvested in Generations in Jazz

The first Generations in Jazz Festival was in 1987 but its origins went back to 1982 when three young musicians performed a tribute for their fathers and grandfathers.

The three-day festival, in what was claimed as the world’s largest modular tent in a paddock on the city’s outskirts, gained world-renowned jazz virtuoso James Morrison at its helm. In 2017, it attracted a record 4,700 students representing125 schools from every state and territory. Students were involved in three concerts, a school music competition and a music workshop. Professional musicians who have taught, performed or judged at the festival include Daryl Somers, Ross Irwin, James Muller, Wycliffe Gordon, Graeme Lyall, Gordon Goodwin and his Big Phat Band, and Jeff Clayton.

The James Morrison Academy of Music, a spinoff from the success of the community-driven Generations in Jazz, was based in Mount Gambier’s city centre until it shut down in 2021.The academy was no longer able to offer its diploma, degree and masters courses after it parted ways with the University of South Australia, with the Covid-19 pandemic cutting the number of students coming from overseas. 

Mount Gambier’s New York-style bar, Morrison’s Jazz Club, had been another offshoot of the academy, with students doing jam sessions, along with international music visitors in spontaneous performances as duos, trios and big bands. James Morrison said he planned to take the Mount Gambier-based education centre on the road as a “pop up academy”.