Immediate past head of the ANU School of Music, Kim Cunio, is to become head of school at Te Kōki, the NZ School of Music, part of the Victoria University of Wellington.

Prof Cunio, who started his long-planned sabbatical leave in January, is presently in India, where he and his wife, the singer Heather Lee, have performed at the Jaipur Literary Festival and the 7th International Sanskrit Computational Linguistics Symposium in Puducherry (Pondicherry), also working on setting Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri to music.

They travel on Saturday to London and Cambridge, where they will be based until the end of July.

Despite misgivings recently aired in some Canberra media, Cunio leaves the ANU on a high note, having successfully presided over a period of review from which the school came out with flying colours, with confirmation by the ANU that the performance component, which has seen enrolment numbers soar under his watch, confirmed as top notch.

As a result of this, under its new head, Adrian Walter, the school can expect to see some expansion of performance.

For his part, Cunio says: “I will conclude my time at ANU with profound fondness,” describing his time as head of school as “like a Wagner opera, lots of music making, a few amazing climactic and sometimes dissonant moments, then back to the music, which we all through composed together.”

Prof Cunio takes up his new appointment on October 1. He hopes to retain an honorary status at the ANU.