NZ School of Music: the real issues

NZ School of Music: the real issues

Failure of the New Zealand School of Music merger and Ilott Green building programme, the latter now postponed to 2013, in practical terms indefinitely, could have been predicted from the start, according to music professionals. Alarm bells began ringing in 2002, when announcement of the merger by Victoria and Massey universities led to Peter Walls resigning his position of Head of Music at Victoria to become CEO of the NZSO, at a stroke reducing the combined schools' quota of international academic excellence by one-third. The official line that combining two small and relatively anonymous music schools would automatically create a Centre of Excellence of international standing was never credible, and after the TEC refused to endorse the joint schools teaching programme as being of sufficiently high academic standard to merit Centre of Excellence status and concurrent funding guarantees, the project was already doomed.

It is now widely believed that the original merger proposal was engineered by the two universities not to create a Centre of Excellence, which they already knew to be unviable, but in order to rid themselves of music schools regarded as costly liabilities in order to free up valuable real estate for redevelopment, in the process hiving off financial responsibility for the joint school to Wellington ratepayers as a selfstanding going concern. The TEC's adverse report put those plans on indefinite hold, and subsequent actions to upgrade existing staff qualifications have been resisted. A number of high level names involved in devising the original plan have departed, including former Vice-Chancellors Stuart McCutcheon and Ken Heskin, and Interim Director Euan Murdoch. The all too predictable failure of the joint initiative to meet Centre of Excellence standards for government special funding has generated considerable embarrassment for Wellington City Council and led to significant backtracking by the Labour government in its financial support.

Faced with the unenviable prospect of having to continue to pour money into the initiative, the joint administration hired American academic Elizabeth Hudson as Director on the strength of her earlier success in raising private funding to convert a struggling community music college into a fully functioning music school. The idea that raising funds from the private sector in New Zealand would ever be as simple as securing multi-million dollar pledges from seriously wealthy retirees living in the Washington beltway proved over-optimistic. Soon after her appointment, the new Director and a heavyweight administrative team including Chancellor Tim Beaglehole and Victoria and Massey vice-chancellors travelled to London to confer an honorary doctorate on Dame Kiri te Kanawa, renewing an ongoing effort to persuade Dame Kiri to endorse the new joint Music School, and thereby enhance its fundraising prospects. Dame Kiri only agreed to accept the honour on condition it were conferred in London out of the glare of New Zealand press publicity. In her acceptance speech Dame Kiri conspicuously avoided endorsing the School of Music in any way or form.

Private funding has failed to materialize. The case for locating a new School of Music building on the Ilott site was based on convenience of location, getting the site for next to nothing, and the universities' original plan to create a separate and self-funding institution for tertiary music for which the universities would no longer have to accept financial responsibility. The academic management and teaching force within the NZ School of Music has shown itself unable to accept, or indeed comprehend, advice on the need for structural adjustments in the teaching programme to eliminate waste and create funding opportunities. A music school designed to cater for training in music professions in the movie industry, computer animation, and new directions in audio, would have funding access to world industries with vast resources for funding research and training, and a particular interest in music related research. At a time when planners could be focusing on new and cost-effective technology opportunities such as continuous streaming of binaural (two-channel surround) live classical music, and teaching programmes in music appreciation, to desktop computers in homes and schools throughout the entire country---and the rest of the world----its proponents continue to bicker over the seating capacity of a projected auditorium that was part of the original, failed deal with Wellington City Council. What is needed, say experts, is a sound projection space like the successful underground Espace de Projection at IRCAM in Paris, with a fully programmable acoustic, a space that can be used as a top recording studio as well as a chamber concert venue.

NOTE: I have been in correspondence with parties involved in this proposal since 2002, and have been lobbying for the establishment of a classical sound recording training programme as a core facility. The views expressed above are shared by many musicians of my acquaintance who have international expertise, some of whom are unable to speak freely for fear of compromising their careers. My own details are viewable on the web. My music textbooks are in use in tertiary academic programmes worldwide, and have been translated into Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and now Chinese.

ENDS

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