music.sydney.edu.au/con100years Media Backgrounder December 2014 Key Con Notes • The site has been used as: 1. a spiritual place for Aborigines who lived and played music, 2. farm for growing produce for the British colony, 3. bakery and mill, 4. horse stables, 5. music conservatorium. • Originally horse stables with 14 turrets and a central courtyard. The turrets were first used as harness rooms and staff accommodation. Today they are music practice rooms and offices. • The stables were designed by a convict – Francis Greenway (from Bath, England) – who became a well-known architect designing around 50 Sydney buildings including Hyde Park Barracks, The Mint, St James and St Matthews churches, Macquarie Lighthouse in Watson’s Bay. • The building is an exemplar of the old colonial gothic picturesque style of architecture in Australia and only surviving example of this style by Francis Greenway. • Houses a High School, Open Academy and Music Faculty for the University of Sydney – providing specialist music training for approximately 2,500 students each year. • Teach an extensive range of string, woodwind and brass instruments as well as percussion, conducting, vocal and opera, organ and piano – of which there are approx. 170 pianos on site. • Most popular instrument - hard to say - but piano and violin are very popular particularly when high school leavers audition for University. • Most unusual instrument taught is the ophicleide - a conical-bore keyed instrument belonging to the bugle family. • More than 900 concerts and performances staged each year with six performance venues including the Verbrugghen Hall, housed within the original Greenway stables, and two identical recital halls – Recital Hall East and Recital Hall West. • Presides over 30,000 square metres accommodating 75 practice rooms, 52 teaching studios and 100 offices. • During its last major renovations in the late 1990s it was one of the few city buildings to go down rather than up! • Built on top of the City Circle Railway Line between St James and Circular Quay. All teaching and performance spaces are sound proofed to reduce vibrations from the train line. • The largest music library in the southern hemisphere: 100,000 scores, 35,000 CDS, 110,000 CDs online and 10,000 books. • Most valuable score in the library is a manuscript ‘The Spanish Ladies’ by one of the greatest British composers Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) found by a postgraduate student. • More than 100 artefacts including remnants of old drains built by convicts in the 1790s and other belongings of horse stable residents were saved during the renovation and are on public display. music.sydney.edu.au/con100years • Archaeological remains of Sydney’s first bakery and mill are sitting under the concert stage of the Verbrugghen Hall. • Home to a handmade Australian piano from Wayne Stuart – entirely handcrafted and slightly longer and with extra keys than a standard piano. • Famous alumni: Dame Marie Bashir, Richard Tognetti, Lyn Williams, Simon Tedeschi, TamaraAnna Cislowska, Kim Williams, The Presets, Paul Dyer, Amelia Farrugia, Matthew Hindson, Simone Young, Barry Ryan, Brett Weymark, Gerard Willems, James Morrison, Iva Davies, Yvonne Kenny, Richard Bonynge and Sam Moran. • Australia’s 10 greatest composers (Limelight Magazine, Sept 2014) were students and/or teachers: Peter Sculthorpe, Carl Vine, Ross Edwards, Elena Kats-Chernin, Nigel Westlake, Matthew Hindson, Richard Meale, Miriam Hyde, Malcolm Williamson and Alfred Hill. • Led by 13 Directors over the last 100 years: Henri Verbrugghen, Arundel Orchard, Edgar Bainton, Eugene Goossens, Bernard Heinze, Joseph Post, Rex Hobcroft, John Painter, John Hopkins, Ronald Smart, Sharman Pretty, Kim Walker and Karl Kramer. Media enquiries: Mandy Campbell, 0481 012 742 or [email protected]