Sydney Chamber Choir’s new music director aims to continue the tradition of commissioning new Australian music.

Commissioning and performing new music have been very much part of my life ever since starting out as a High School Music Teacher in the 1960s. Having school students compose music was a fundamental part of the school music programme, together, through recordings and broadcasts, with raising an awareness of what was being composed not only in Australia but also in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Students were free to compose as they wished provided they could justify musically what they were doing and had a clear intention as to the direction the music might take. The classes were co-educational, therefore there was no discrimination between boys and girls composing. All were expected to produce music according to their abilities and in so doing tended to reflect in their compositions the music they were studying or knew well.

There was no compulsion to be modern or contemporary for the sake of being so. In fact, many students reacted strongly against the music of Messiaen, Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Bartók and late Stravinsky, but responded positively to the music of Peter Sculthorpe or...