Born of the Keating government’s Creative Nation policy in 1994, the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) was conceived as an elite school for gifted young orchestral musicians, providing intensive, often one-on-one tuition.

The academy’s funding survived the Howard years, despite recurrent concerns in some quarters about the institution not achieving its potential – concerns evidently shared by Peter Garrett when he took office last year.

The course of ANAM’s negotiations with the new Federal Arts Minister regarding its future has now become a matter of public debate. ANAM’s Board claims it was given no warning that new conditions would be imposed on funding, and that insufficient time was provided to implement the government’s requested changes once they were so advised.

Garrett’s department, conversely, insists the Academy was given a fair chance to shape up, and failed to do so. Whatever the truth, in October Peter Garrett announced the end of ANAM’s $2.5 million annual funding and the closure of the Academy at the end of this year.

Owen McKern, Program Manager of classical station 3MBS, believes that ANAM may have become a victim of its unconventional approach to tuition.

“As ANAM does not offer degrees or other formal qualifications, perhaps it is hard for Canberra bureaucrats to quantify the success or failure of this vital institution?” McKern muses.

“As Artistic Director Brett Dean pointed out in an interview on 3MBS [last week], at no time has the Minister Peter Garrett, nor other key participants in this decision, actually taken the time to visit the Academy to witness for themselves the way in which the institution was managed.”

One of the government’s conditions which ANAM allegedly failed to meet was that it e establishment stronger, more involved relationships with other music organisations. It’s a suggestion that doesn’t match the experience of Dr de Vos Malan, CEO of the new Melbourne Recital Centre, set to open in February 2009.

“To the best of my knowledge, Brett Dean and his colleagues at ANAM were doing a brilliant job, which was why we as a new recital centre engaged with them, why we entered into contracts with them, and why we were busy building a relationship with ANAM as a key presenting partner,” de Vos Malan tells CANVAS.

Many defenders of ANAM have suggested the decision to close the Academy smacks of anti-elitism, if not a blatant double standard. Why, they ask, do elite arts training bodies seem to be judged differently than those for, say, sport?  

Dr de Vos Malan remembers that under one former Federal Arts Minister, Rod Kemp, the political landscape was quite different. “Rod always described [these bodies] as the arts version of the Australian Institute of Sport. Because to him, they were not elitist at all - they were essential if you were going to have great artists, for pretty much the same reasons that we set up the AIS. We wanted to win gold medals. You don’t do that by having everybody in the world on the oval.”

High profile appeals, internet petitions and a last-ditch plea to the minister to reverse his decision from 750 artists, among them Geoffrey Rush, Barry Humphries, Paul Kelly and numerous conductors and orchestras from Australia and overseas, failed to change Garrett’s mind. On November 18th, the minister announced the Government’s new plan for the training of elite musicians in Melbourne.

“I consider it to be absolutely critical that when the Federal Government is providing over $2.5 million in funding to elite classical music training, that it happens in a way which is both efficient and effective,” Garrett told the media. “And it’s very clear to me that that wasn’t the case.”

Efficient and effective, in this case, means ploughing ANAM’s funding into a new body to be developed by the University of Melbourne – the Australian Institute of Music Performance (AIMP).

Apart from a name that guarantees some confusing phone calls for the already existent Australian Institute of Music (in Sydney), there is scant detail so far on the plans for AIMP. Given that AIMP is not due to open its doors until July next year, the immediate prospects for the 55 students already enrolled with ANAM for 2009 – not to mention ANAM staff – remain uncertain. Certainly there are concerns about the capacity of the University to match ANAM’s level of elite training, and maintain the frequency of its public performances.

Richard Tognetti, the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Artistic Director, is among those who believe the very “spirit” of ANAM will be diluted by the decision.

“If you have a fine glass of wine and you pour it into a litre of the house wine,” he said, “it doesn’t improve the house wine.”

Brett Dean, ANAM’s Artistic Director, is sanguine about his own future.

“I want to go back to just being a musician,” he told McKern on 3MBS. “I would recommend that the Arts Minister perhaps consider also getting back to being a musician.”

www.anam.com.au