Richard Letts
Richard Letts AM, PhD (UC Berkeley). Currently Director of The Music Trust. Previously Founder/Director of the Music Council of Australia, Director Australian Music Centre, Director Music Board, Australia Council for the Arts, Director MacPhail Center for Music, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Director, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, San Francisco. Author, editor, researcher, advocate, former musician.
Richard's recent articles
3 February 2023
Art that pumps the heart
So we have just had our first presentation of Australian Honours under the new Labor government.
21 November 2016
RICHARD LETTS. National Opera Review: propping up the 19th Century
The National Opera Review has reported. Instigator George Brandis is probably well enough satisfied. The Terms of Reference are pure Brandis. The name is National Opera Review, the game is a review of the four larger companies funded by the Commonwealth. Excluded are the Victorian Opera and the numerous small companies that are the growing edge of opera in Australia.
24 October 2015
Richard Letts. Mitch Fifield should dump it while he can.
In a Senate Estimates hearing this week, the new Arts Minister Mitch Fifield was gently questioned for ten minutes by Senator Scott Ludlam about his intentions with regard to the future of arts support: in particular, did he intend to implement the plan of his displaced predecessor, Senator George Brandis, to use funds taken from the budget of the Australia Council to set up a new fund under direct Ministerial control. This scheme created open warfare between Brandis and his arts constituency and doubtless was the reason for his removal from the post in PM Turnbulls ministry reshuffle. Fifield...
24 July 2015
Richard Letts. George Brandis' hobby.
George Brandiss day job is as Commonwealth Attorney-General. He is also Arts Minister, which on the evidence he treats as a sort of hobby. He has been responsible now for two annual arts budgets. In the 2014 budget, there was a cut to arts funding but he quarantined from the cut the 28 major performing arts organisations funded through the Australia Council; these are the main orchestras, opera companies, theatre companies, dance/ballet companies, Musica Viva and Circus Oz. They were quarantined again in 2015, not from an overall funding cut to the arts, but from a raid by Brandis himself...