Symposium, Exhibition and Concerts in Australia

Pianist Kevin Tamanini (left) and singer Norbert Meyn, who will be performing in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney

Following an invitation from the Austrian Embassy in Canberra, the co-investigators of the Music, Migration and Mobility project Nils Grosch, Peter Adey and Norbert Meyn will be reunited for the symposium 'Musical Exile, Migration and Cultural Mobility' at the University of Melbourne on Friday August 15 and Saturday August 16. Meyn and Grosch will also travel to the embassy in Canberra (August 18) and the Goethe Institute Sydney (August 20) to present a talk, the mobile MMM exhibition and Norbert’s Émigré Cabaret Recital with Melbourne-based pianist Kevin Tamanini.

Alongside the events, the RCM's exhibition 'Music, Migration and Mobility - The Story of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain' will be shown, complemented by two additional panels about Émigré Musicians in Australia.

Exhibition 'Music, Migration and Mobility - The legacy of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain', shown here at the British Library in London

The Melbourne Symposium builds on the work of the Research Initiative Music and Migration at Salzburg University/Mozarteum, which aimed to advance theory and methodologies in research about music and migration and produced the recently published Routledge Handbook of Music and Migration; and the Music, Migration and Mobility project. Hosted at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia, the symposium also aims to build on growing scholarship on the contributions of displaced persons, refugees, and other postwar migrants to the musical life of postwar Australia.

The symposium will feature a keynote by Prof Nils Grosch (Salzburg University), “Music and Mobility: Outlining a New Field of Research” on Friday 15 August at 9:30am. The performance with Norbert Meyn and Kevin Tamanini will take place at 7:30pm on the same day. You can book your free place for the symposium and/or the recital here.

The symposium coincides with the 80th anniversary of Musica Viva, one of Australia’s leading presenters of chamber music, founded by the Viennese émigré Richard Goldner in 1945. Musica Viva will be hosting a celebratory concert with the specially commissioned ‘Sonnet of an Emigrant’ by Cathy Milliken, performed by the Takács Quartet and Angie Milliken, at the Melbourne Recital Centre the evening before the symposium.

The Musica Viva Players, founded by Viennese Émigré Richard Goldner in 1945