Premier & Trade, Peter Beattie
13/04/05
Griffith Has Bold Brass Plan To Attract Japanese Students
Tokyo: Premier Peter Beattie is helping to spread news that Griffith
University is aiming to attract Japanese students to study a new course at the Queensland Conservatorium - a brass band major in its bachelor of music degree.
"People might imagine that budding Japanese musicians are more interested in electric guitars or the traditional shamisen, a kind of guitar with only three strings, but Griffith University is expecting a queue of Japanese brass players," said Mr Beattie.
"At Griffith they will learn the finer points of playing instruments such as the flugel horn.
"Peter Luff, Head of Brass and Senior Lecturer in French Horn at Queensland Conservatorium, tells me that Japan has the sixth highest number of brass bands after the U.K, U.S.A, Switzerland, Australia, Norway and the Netherlands.
"But there are insufficient university places for them in the world and many are turned away.
"Peter Luff discussed this shortage with Professor David King, the
Australian director of Salford University's Brass Band department, one of Europe's largest centres for specialist education in Band Musicianship.
"They agreed that Australia would be ideally placed to offer an alternative, given Australia's popularity with the international market and the high level of expertise we can offer in this field.
"Queensland has established a reputation as Australia's Smart State when it comes to education and is known in Japan as a safe and friendly destination for students."
The brass band offering at Queensland Conservatorium will add to the B.Music program with the:
- Introduction of tenor horn, baritone, cornet and flugel horn
into the major study offerings,
- Addition of a literature subject, "History of Brass Banding in
Australia"
- Introduction of the "Brass Band" ensemble
Mr Luff said: "Brass banding in Australia has long been identified as a major training ground of young brass players in Australia producing many of the country's top professional brass players.
"The strength of the movement is evidenced by the high community profile of the brass bands and extraordinarily large membership with more than 1,000 in Queensland which has more than 40 registered bands.
"Given the community relevance of the genre and interest it has for young musicians, it seemed obvious that to have a brass department truly representative of the requirements of the professional and amateur music community, we should incorporate brass banding into the current major study offerings.
"This has already proven to be of interest to many young Australian players and would be of great significance to International students.
"Brass banding is particularly popular in Japan, where students wishing to pursue tertiary education in banding currently travel to the United Kingdom to study.
"This is a major step forward for the University in its advocacy of
community banding and will help to validate the value of amateur music making both nationally and internationally.
"In 2001 I announced we would seek to double the income from exporting education initiatives.
"Our export earnings from international education and training have risen from $449 million in 1998/99 to $912 million in 2004 and are on track to reach $1 billion a year.
"I'm proud to say that thanks to initiatives like this today, the
international education and training industry in Queensland now supports more than 9,000 jobs across the state."
Mr Beattie is leading an 11-day trade and investment mission to Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan.
Contact: +61 7 3224 4500
13 April 2005.
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