Scott Maxwell, Renee McCarthy top national music teachers in twist on George Pearce style in South Australia
National ARIA Music Teacher of the Year award winner Scott Maxwell was a member of the Bearded Clams in the 1990s.
Scott Maxwell from Mount Gambier’s Grant High School and Woodcroft College’s Renee McCarthy won the first two national ARIA Music Teacher of the Year awards 2017-18.
A guitarist in The Bearded Clams since the mid 1990s, Maxwell represents a change of style but not standards set by the Music Teachers’ Association of South Australia, founded in 1930. The association annual scholarships and prizes recognise a tradition of inspiring music teachers.
Its Reimann-Robinson scholarship, for all 18-or-under instrumental/vocal students of association members, Immanuel Gotthold Reimann, who, with Professor E. Harold Davies, founded the association was its first president in 1930. Gwen Robinson, a Wilderness School teacher for many years, had her scholarship merged with Reimann’s who was her teacher.
An open award for any student and junior award (under 18) honours pianist and composer Miriam Hyde. Norman Sellick Memorial Prize for students 12 and under salutes the Music Teachers’ Association of South Australia’s longest-serving president. Music Teachers’ Association/Grace Barbara Turner Awards for excellence in performance build on association awards in the Adelaide Eisteddfod from about 1980. From 2005, the association used a bequest by music teacher Grace Turner to expand prizes for performance to keyboard, strings, wind and vocal.
George Pearce Memorial Award prizemoney goes to the winner of the Australian Music Examinations Board (SA and NT) award to a seventh grade piano student.
Pearce, born in Balaklava in 1892, son of a Methodist minister, went to Prince Alfred College and studied the piano with William Silver, “winning his scholarship for pianoforte for five years in succession”. He studied ensemble playing with Eugene Alderman. In World War I, Pearce served in France in the original AIF 11th Field Ambulance. During the Battle of Messines in 1917, Pearce was gassed and sent to convalesce. He conducted the orchestra attached to the 3rd Division headquarters under General John Monash and performed in Paris with the divisional concert party.
On discharge, he studied piano at Royal Academy of Music, London, with Oscar Beringer and Herbert Fryer. He also studied singing. In 1919, Pearce joined Adelaide University’s Elder Conservatorium and taught piano until 1958. He was a long-term examiner for the AMEB and overseas scholarships. He took part in a private performance of Percy Grainger’s The Warriors by the composer at Adelaide Town Hall and was associated with the South Australian Orchestra.
Pearce married violinist and orchestra leader Sylvia Whitington in 1927. They gave many performances and Sylvia taught the violin and viola at the conservatorium Three important Pearce’ students were Dr Alex Barnard, The Advertiser music critic who later taught at the Sydney Conservatorium; Jessica Dix, outstanding ABC accompanist; and Carmel Hakendorf, an accomplished pianist and violinist. He also taught Joyce Sumner, who won the Elder overseas scholarship for 1935.
Pearce was organist at Flinders Street Baptist Church, Adelaide, Trinity Methodist Church, Glenelg, and then Brighton Methodist Church. George Pearce students met to set up an annual prize in his memory in 1975 at the home of Andrea Williams.
