Barry jones launch speech

Barry Owen Jones, AC FAA FAHA FTSE FASSA FACE FRSA, is an Australian polymath, writer, teacher, lawyer, social activist, quiz champion and former politician. Nicky and Stuart know Barry is a neighbour and lover of the arts. The Parkville Ensemble was set up in 2000 to perform great chamber music. Professional and community musicians play free of charge to raise funds for worthy causes such as the Royal Children's Hospital and now PODtriangle. Barry and Rachel are regular supporters of our concerts and have become friends. Barry was kind enough to become Patron of PODtriangle and this is the transcript of his speech at the launch meeting on 27th March 2024.

I was honoured to accept Stuart Riley’s invitation to be the Patron of his 

highly innovative. imaginative and valuable PODtriangle (Players, Owners, Donors) Instrument Fund, and to launch it. 

PODtriangle (PODt) will source and provide instruments to talented Australian musicians by bringing together Players, Owners and Donors via a not-for-profit structure.

Stuart Riley’s PODtriangle operates on this hypothesis: 

Many fine musical instruments in Australia are family heirlooms, preserved securely, but never played. If they were made available, on loan, to aspiring artists, such as outstanding students at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) they could assist professional development and help project young musicians into significant careers.

Other important instruments are currently on sale, but beyond the means of young students and their families. But Stuart’s PODtriangle could acquire the instruments on loan, insure them, manage and place them.

The values of ‘tier 1’ instruments have increased exponentially in recent decades. 

Violins by Stradivarius and Guarneri ‘del Gesu’ have a current value of between $US 10-20 million. Many are owned by foundations or museums. (The Stradivarius is more brilliant in tone, the Guarneri darker and richer).

The Australian String Quartet (ASQ) has four instruments made by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini in the 18th Century and gives the group a unique timbre.

Ray Chen, an outstanding violinist, born in Taiwan but an Australian citizen, used to play the Stradivarius that belonged to the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim. Joachim revived the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Mendelssohn and premiered the Brahms Concerto. The violin belongs to the Nippon Music Foundation. 

Ray Chen now plays a Stradivarius that belonged to Jascha Heifetz.

Stuart Riley, principal double bass in Orchestra Victoria, is one of ten full time bass principals on Australia, and a passionate player, promoter and arranger of chamber music.

He plays a magnificent, and appropriately huge, bass made by John Lott in Covent Garden in 1835.

Josephine Vains is an outstanding and versatile cellist, as a soloist, part of the Firebird Trio, teacher at the Victoria College of the Arts, and mentor. Her repertoire is unusually broad. She currently plays a Thomas Dodd cello, made in London in 1800, on loan from Stuart and Nicky.

Players develop a symbiotic relationship with their instrument. I couldn’t help thinking of the novel The Third Policeman by the Irish satirist Flann O’Brien in which a policeman begins to morph into his bicycle, so that it  becomes hard to tell where the policeman ends and the bicycle begins.

I have seen no evidence yet that Josie is morphing into her cello or Stuart into his enormous double bass, but I’ll keep looking.

Stuart’s drive is central to the PODtriangle. But it would not be possible without Nicky Kilpatrick, who plays more than three essential roles, as a violist, clinical dentist at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Stuart’s CEO, and much, much more.

The Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM)

ANAM is an outstanding national institution and we are very fortunate to have it in Melbourne. It ranks in the top four or five performance based schools in the world, and works with musicians such as Simone Young, Richard Tognetti, Anthony Marwood, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Brett Dean, Richard Mills, Kathryn Stott.

Of its 64 current students, 15 are from New South Wales, 14 from Queensland, 12 from Victoria, 8 from Western Australia, 4 from South Australia, one from Tasmania  – and 6 from our seventh State, New Zealand.

All the students have one element in common, access to a musical instrument from early childhood, mostly from home but often from school – as in Queensland (but not in Victoria). And as they develop, they need better instruments.

The Masterpiece v. The Best Seller

For me, of all the arts, music is the most powerful, dangerous, challenging and exposing. It would be painful to live without it because it is my window into the mysteries of time, existence and experience. But it leaves me vulnerable as it elevates me to heights of emotion and understanding. I choose to live with the risk.  

And I see many people who converge in their engagement with the arts and are conscious of tensions between the role of culture and the role of civilization: they are not the same thing. There is conflict between the immediate, familiar, the local, material and self-interest, and the universal, long term, abstract and conceptual. 

Approaching the arts generally – music in particular, but also literature – suggests an analogy with cathedrals, and their two axes, vertical and horizontal. 

The vertical pulls our gaze upward, looked through the vault towards the stars, reaching out for the transcendental and numinous, rapture and the unattainable; for some, Heaven. Pursuing the vertical is difficult, complex, dangerous, involving travelling alone, coming to terms with the nameless, the aspirational, the abstract, the unique. 

Masterpieces in music, both in the Western and Eastern tradition, are characterized by extraordinary complexity, with permutations and combinations paralleling, and expanding, brain function, combining memorable tonality, rhythmic structure and emotional power. This miracle involves combining labyrinthine means with a clear, unambiguous message and an inner logic. 

Tackling complexity is not just a matter of taste but an essential evolutionary developmental mechanism, which strengthens brain plasticity and capacity, wards off loss of cognition and the onset of dementia more effectively than computer games, Sudoku, crossword puzzles or jigsaws.

Sometimes people say, ‘I tried music – but didn’t progress past strumming a few common chords on the guitar.’ We may accept this as understandable. However, it would raise concern if people said, ‘I’ll use language – but only the 500 most common words’ or ‘I’ll use mathematics – but only simple arithmetic’ or ‘I’ll use a limited range of the visual spectrum.’ 

Complex music involves sustained concentration and discipline – whether in performing or listening – for more than a three minute burst (including repetition.) Jazz is an anomaly, requiring virtuosity, diversity, stamina and originality of a high order.

Contemporary tastes reflect the times, with significant group reinforcement and bonding: each choice of music or reading is likely to be familiar or understandable to others in the age cohort. Attendees at the recent Taylor Swift concert in Melbourne – the Prime Minister included – could mouth the words of the songs, with a powerful reinforcement of the familiar.

There are serious class divisions in cultural consumption, reinforced by a split-level education system, where private schools encourage performance skills, and most public schools lack the resources to provide access to concerts.

It is a matter of observation, confirmed by sheer numbers, that the familiar and predictable are psychologically satisfying and a vital factor in social bonding.

Attempting to discuss The Iliad, Hamlet or The Marriage of Figaro proceeds on completely different bases. It is risky to assume that potential readers or listeners have any prior knowledge or emotional engagement, even after twelve years at school, followed by tertiary education.

The PODtriangle is a valuable and courageous experiment, all honour to Stuart and Nicky for initiating it and it is with great satisfaction that I declare it launched.