THE recently-unveiled 2022 Musica Viva in Schools program is not only devised in Canberra, but at its centre is paid work for Canberra musicians.

It’s no accident that a lot of the activities are based in Canberra, artistic director of education Michael Sollis says, but as befits something coming out of the nation’s capital, it’s a genuinely national program. 

It involves people from as far apart as the Torres Strait and Perth, with a broad range of musical cultures represented, not least an Iranian ney (flute) player from Perth, a Japanese yidaki player, the percussion group Taikoz and multicultural music and dance with Mara and Llew Kiek.

The program features live interactive performances, curriculum and online teaching resources, as well as professional development webinars, with an eye on web-based activities during lockdowns.

Sollis is tickled pink that his program has been nominated for the Excellence in Music Education Award in the 2021 APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards for its work in 2020 delivering 530 virtual performances to 91,000 students across the country after borders were closed due to COVID-19.

Among the more unusual initiatives among the 15 to choose from in 2022 is “Colours At Home”, in which oboist Celia Craig, who experiences chromesthesia (where sound evokes an involuntary experience of colour) joins forces with guitarist Caspar Hawksley. 

In “Two Wheel Time Machine” students and teachers find their musical balance by learning how to create a rock opera.

“Walking in the Wilderness”, headed up by flautists Aawa White and Thea Rossen, involves getting kids to create music for the spaces around them and includes a co-commission between Musica Viva and Canberra’s Griffyn Ensemble. Directed by Sollis, he and Ngunnawal custodian Richie Allan co-created a work based on the birds in Mulligans Flat. Sollis says it teaches children “how mother nature sings to them and how they sing to mother nature”.

Another work in the wilderness project sees former Canberra composer Tim Hansen working with students from Ashcroft Primary School in western Sydney.

For “Adventures in Antarctica: sounds from a frozen world”, Canberra super-harpist Alice Giles joins Bendigo harpist Liena Lacey to take students on a journey through Antarctica through film and sound.

Canberra’s Dr Stovepipe, Dr Jim Sharrock, Dr Gillian Cosgrove and Dr Edward Radclyffe, who like to describe themselves as “a fully certified string band with miraculous healing properties,” will perform and teach a bit of music history, too, in “Swing, Ragtime and Hot Jazz”. 

“There’s music everywhere and from everywhere and the whole aim is to find a new way of sparking creativity,” Sollis says. 

He should know. As the father of two young boys, he is gratified to find that his musical inclinations are not falling on deaf ears. His oldest boy, Bryn, was recently offered his choice of presents and responded: “I want to play bouzouki.” Luckily Sollis had one handy. “We, too, have a go at everything,” he says.

The Musica Viva in Schools philosophy is a unique one, Sollis believes, as it sends Australia’s most creative music practitioners into school, sparking the creativity of both students and teachers.

Most special, to him, is the fact that the program is led by artists, working musicians, who are given the resources to create their own work, saying: “We are very proud that they are 100 per cent paid”.

That’s no mean claim. Sollis is well known as an arts activist in the ACT and says: “We need more artists on boards, artists in front”. 

It pleases him that Paul KIldea, the artistic director of Musica Viva and himself another Canberran, is a musician, too. 

“That means it’s part of Musica Viva’s DNA to work closely through musicians to support kids across the country.”

2022 Musica Viva in Schools program at musicaviva.com.au/ensembles/