HISTORY
HISTORY OF THE ACADEMY
The beginnings of the present home of the Zimbabwe Academy of Music
go back almost sixty years to 1953 when what, in Derek Hudson’s words, was “a gauche, solitary and rather unlovely building comprising about a dozen small studios and one larger one for public concerts, surrounded by acres of open ground” opened for business. The Academy itself had been founded four years earlier in 1949 in rented premises as a non-profit-making organisation, welcoming students of all races and ages and actively seeking to encourage black Zimbabweans to study musical instruments, though its actual origins went even further back to a private establishment originating in the mid-1930s.
The new building had an auspicious debut when Sir John Barbirolli laid the foundation stone on 30 June 1953, though work was by then largely complete. This was what is now the south wing of the Academy and it was but the beginning of a twenty-year programme to create a truly ambitious building. Ten years of fund-raising followed before another structure began to rise, in appearance exactly the same as, but set some distance apart from, its companion, and connected to it by a covered walkway.
The grand design only became finally apparent after several more years and much more fund-raising when the central section of the building united the two isolated wings in elegant harmony. It was the most ambitious part of the scheme and included the main foyer, further studios, administrative offices and the Beit Wing including the Library, but there was still further delay before its completion in 1974 with, most impressive of all, the Robert Sibson Hall. This is now so easily taken for granted that it is easy to overlook the fact that it is one of the finest small recital halls to be found anywhere with perfect sight-lines from every one of its 394 seats and an equally perfect acoustic for music. Sadly, more than forty years on, the hall is still not complete as its designers intended, and in particular it lacks an effective air-conditioning system, almost essential at the height of summer.
The Academy’s fiftieth year was not much cause for celebration and, indeed, was not celebrated: Derek Hudson was in declining health and retired as director in April 2003 and financial clouds were thickening on the horizon. The Academy was almost entirely self-supporting and government grants had dried up years before so that declining numbers made its future ever more doubtful. For fifty years, it had stood for ambition, hope and optimism as thousands of children and adults studied music and took international exams, but to many it seemed as though the end could not be long delayed as covetous eyes were cast upon its facilities and grounds
But there were a few who were determined that so important a cultural asset should not be lost to Bulawayo and become an outpost of the Trade Fair, and they were helped by events. A number of factors came together to give the Academy a new lease of life, ironically not least among them the country’s increasingly precipitous plunge into hyper-inflation. At about this time, Girls’ College had submitted a proposal to the Beit Trust to build a music centre within its own property in Suburbs. However, the government’s relentless onslaught on private education and what then seemed a devastating rate of inflation called the project into question almost as soon as the Trust had made a generous grant and, in Ian McCausland’s words, “the concept of redirecting the Beit Trust benefaction, through the Girls’ College conduit towards resuscitating the fabric and the fortunes of the Zimbabwe Academy of Music was proposed”. The governing bodies of the Academy and Girls’ College approved the idea, the Beit Trust swiftly gave its consent and a committee worked on the details of an arrangement whereby the Academy would also become the Girls’ College Music Centre.
A formal document was ready by the end of 2005 but it had been anticipated in that the year had already brought significant change to the Academy, physical, financial and administrative. The generosity of the Beit Trust helped to realise some of the unfinished business of thirty years earlier, most especially with the supply of an entirely new lighting system in the Robert Sibson Hall, though the second phase of this still awaits completion.
The hall itself was redecorated as were the foyer and the central exterior facade. Access to the stage was much improved by the creation of a second entrance stage left. The cellars and storage areas beneath the raked seating of the Sibson Hall were altered to create a large popular music studio and teaching area as well as much larger store-room for instruments and equipment. Breezeblock additions on the ground floor corridors and the fitting of gates improved the security of the building.
Other benefactions made it possible for the stage panelling to be sanded and re-varnished and the stage itself sanded and varnished for the first time. There have also been other ongoing improvements and additions. The foundation stone, largely unseen for forty years, was moved to the right of the front portico and re-dedicated. Fans and blinds were installed in various offices and rooms to help ward off summer’s onslaughts and a substantial quantity of audio-visual equipment was acquired.
Some form of memorial to Derek Hudson seemed essential after his quarter-century at the helm of the Academy and the idea of an appeal in his name for this vital area took root, coupled with the creation of a bust to keep Robert Sibson company in the foyer. Gill Kaufman offered this latter before any request could be made and the result was unveiled on 15 October 2007 on a plinth a few inches taller than Robert’s-Derek’s height meant that he looked down on most so it was thought fitting that he should continue to do so! It shows him at the height of his powers in his fifties – no glasses which he always hated having to wear and in conductor’s white tie.
The first part of the audio-visual project was by this time well in hand and a room in the Beit Wing adjacent to the library is its base. Seating up to 20, it can be used as a study centre and lecture room and has individual “work-stations” equipped with computers, headphones and CD players. DVDs and videos can also be shown to smaller audiences. Through the generosity of the British Friends of the Zimbabwe Academy of Music, the computers are now equipped with the most up-to-date music-writing programme, Sibelius 7. Room 25 has been much improved and is a suitable venue for audiences of up to 60 or so for talks and lectures, and both rooms have been equipped with blinds and ceiling fans.
But it is the Sibson Hall that has already become the heart of the scheme. Initially a long-term ambition, the acquisition of a large, portable screen and a superb projector has made possible the showing of DVDs to much larger audiences. In due course there will be a public address system for conferences and the like, which will also be very useful for quietly spoken musicians who want to talk to their audience. Work has recently taken place to create more permanent installations including surround-sound, but the hall has for ten years been home to regular showings of opera, ballet, musicals, orchestral music as well as feature films and series of general interest.
This indicates a largely new direction for the Academy. As well as continuing to teach its current enrolment, it is developing as a centre for all those interested in music. Its hall has meant that it has served that purpose via outside bodies hiring its facilities for the last 40 years but the Academy itself is now the principal player. The regular DVD shows are one aspect but the very well-stocked library is more widely available – books and printed music as well as cassettes, videos and CDs are all available at very modest charges and DVDs will soon be added too.
Successful fund-raising concerts in London, much aided by a former student, Ron Sandler, have made other developments possible. All of the Academy’s 20+ pianos were thoroughly inspected and, where necessary, reconditioned and overhauled. A completely new second kitchen was created and leased to create an Academy coffee shop. Part of the front lawn was put under slasto to make an outside area available even after heavy rain. The portion of the drive in front of the building was replaced with key-blocks. The garden close to the main entrance was redeveloped with as new lawn and a water feature installed at the north end with a donation from Sir Howard Davies in memory of friends. Additional shelving was installed to create a library annex and relieve pressure on the shelves although storage space remains at a premium.
A long-held ambition to increase and improve the Academy’s stock of instruments was realised when Senator Coltart acquired for the Academy a very generous donation of instruments and equipment from the Chinese government.
Ambitious plans for an outdoor performance area, a water reticulation system, replanting of the main lawn and improvements to the hall’s air circulation were all realised in 2014-15 through generous grants and determined fund-raising.
Senator Coltart called the Academy “a jewel in the crown of our country, a vital force in cultural education”, but he added that “like so many of our once strong institutions, it hangs by a thread”. Recent developments have strengthened that thread and, somewhat belatedly, the Academy has launched its second half-century with a determination to increase its role as a centre of education, excellence and entertainment in Bulawayo. Chaos and collapse may be all around but music brings escape and relief in bad times, relaxation and fulfilment in good, and the Academy is determined that it will be there to provide both for many years to come.
Sir John in Bulawayo …
… and the tale of a trowel
The foundation stone of the Zimbabwe Academy of Music has been re-positioned by the main entrance and will be re-dedicated immediately before the opening concert of the Festival by Ania Safonova, associate leader of the Halle, who will use the trowel that Sir John Barbirolli was given when it was laid. There follows some account of Sir John’s time in Bulawayo in 1953 and of the trowel’s subsequent travels.
Sir John Barbirolli spent a month in Bulawayo almost exactly 53 years ago in June and July 1953. He came with the Halle Orchestra as part of perhaps the most ambitious festival ever mounted in southern Africa, involving as it did more than three hundred performers from Britain. Not only was the Halle Orchestra here but also soloists, chorus and orchestra from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Sadler’s Wells Theatre (now Royal) Ballet and a theatrical troupe led by Sir John Gielgud who directed and starred in Shakespeare’s Richard II. It was all in honour of the centenary of the birth of Cecil John Rhodes on 5 July 1853. As such, it is as potent an example as any of the change in perceptions and values that has taken place in the last half century.
There were nearly a hundred players in the Halle and, once arrived, there was plenty of hard work since in just two weeks they had no fewer than fourteen orchestral concerts with five completely different programmes, all culminating in a gala concert on the eve of Rhodes’ centenary. In addition a substantial part of the orchestra then became the Halle Theatre Orchestra for the ballet performances, some of them conducted by Sir John himself including a memorable presentation of Act II of Swan Lake when water from the Matsheumhlope seeped into the pit so that most of the orchestra played barefoot with their trousers rolled to the knees. And, when the orchestra had left, he stayed on to conduct both Aida and La Boheme with the Covent Garden forces.
The orchestral programmes embraced many of Sir John’s favourite works including symphonies by Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms and Sibelius. But there was a novelty too, some of the earliest performances of Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, premiered only a few months earlier and heard no fewer than three times. Barbirolli and Vaughan Williams had become close friends by this time and the 80-year-old composer was to dedicate his next symphony to “Glorious John”.
All these concerts (and the opera and ballet) took place in The Theatre Royal, in fact a camouflaged aircraft hangar made largely of corrugated iron and situated on the site of the current Centenary Park Amphitheatre. (It was subsequently removed to Harare and still stands at the airport there.) It seated three thousand and the acoustic was generally held to be good – though (like Bulawayo’s subsequent concert halls) it was not proof against intrusive noise: a railway line with an ungated level crossing ran close by in those days and at seven minutes past nine each evening a train halted and sounded its whistle for a minute, as required by the regulations.
It was a glorious June by day, one of the coldest on record by night and the Theatre Royal was unheated. As the season progressed, many of the audience came with rugs and hot water bottles whilst the players wore pyjamas under their dress suits and for at least one concert Sir John wore his greatcoat to conduct. Peter Rollason was very involved backstage and on more than one occasion Sir John implored him to rub his frozen hands during the interval! (By contrast, imperturbable as ever, the Queen Mother sat through the Gala in an off-the-shoulder evening dress. Princess Margaret was with her and one member of the audience has a vivid memory of her “clapping like a seal” – from the elbows!) When the festival was over, Barbirolli claimed that on average every member of the white population of Bulawayo had attended one concert and that others had travelled thousands of miles to hear “my great orchestra”. Even so, the organisers had over-anticipated demand (some programmes were given three hearings, the rest two) and figures suggest that the concerts as a whole played to around two-thirds capacity.
Not so the Gala. It was crammed and room found for an extra two hundred seats: “An enormous audience”, Sir John exulted, “not another soul could have got a toe into the theatre. And everybody, please note, in evening dress”. In his account for HALLE (the orchestra’s magazine), he wrote that the royal box blazed with orders and flowers and altogether the scene suggested “not a relatively new-born city but an occasion of State in some great and ancient capital”.
Despite his heavy schedule, Sir John revelled in everything that happened to him: he umpired a cricket match and stayed on for the braai that followed – “succulent meats cooked in deep embers, probably the most primitive form of cooking – and still the best, I would say”; he was driven to the Matopos and Rhodes’ Grave in a convoy of private cars by members of the Bulawayo Municipal Orchestra (it only changed its name when Derek Hudson arrived); he played first cello in an impromptu performance of Schubert’s Quintet at a Bulawayo home at one in the morning; he laid the foundation stone of the Rhodesian Academy of Music; after concerts he cooked for his guests in his hotel suite where he had a small fridge and cooker installed since, he claimed, it was almost impossible to get a meal served in Bulawayo after eight. And he was delighted by the list of howlers committed (or invented) by those who could not get his name right: Sir John Bradman, Sir John Broccoli, Sir John Bismarck, Sir John Barrymore and, he thought, best of all, Sir Barber Olly.
Sir John laid the foundation stone of the Academy of Music on Tuesday 30 June when the first phase of the building, the present south wing, was already complete. The foundation stone is a very substantial piece of granite with a beautifully polished face and it was positioned to the left of what was then the main entrance. As plans progressed, front became back with the result that for more than thirty years the stone has languished on what is now a rear wall. However, it has now been moved to a site just to the left of the present main entrance and will be re-dedicated immediately before the opening concert of the festival by Ania Safonova, associate leader of the Halle, when she will use the selfsame trowel that Sir John was given 53 years ago.
The first part of the story of how the trowel came to return to Bulawayo can best be told by The Chiel, writing in The Chronicle on 8 January 1976:
There’s a souvenir of Bulawayo history for sale in England – and I wonder if there’s a chance of it returning home?
The souvenir is a solid silver, hallmarked trowel which was presented to Sir John Barbirolli after he laid the foundation stone of the Rhodesian Academy of Music in Bulawayo in 1953 … A collector has approached the Barbirolli Society, offering the trowel for sale, and he claims the value of the silver and craftsmanship must be over £100. The trowel, which has a bone or ivory handle, is still in its black presentation case.
It seems that Sir John gave the trowel to a charity auction some years ago [not so – as was subsequently made clear, it was only after his death in 1970 that it was auctioned], and it is now in the possession of Mr.Peter Rowland of Cheshire. Mr.Rowland is asking for bids in writing before January 31, and says he will offer the trowel for sale at Sotheby’s, or a similar saleroom, if no suitable bid is received.
A spokesman for the Academy in Bulawayo told me yesterday that the Academy does not have money to buy the souvenir and will not be making any bids. I wonder if there is some public-spirited Bulawayan with money to spare (preferably in England) who might like to buy back the trowel for the Academy? It would look rather nice in a display case in the entrance hall.
The rest is simply told. A considerable number of “public-spirited Bulawayans” came forward, and there were several from around the country too, 108 in all, so that not only was the trowel purchased but there was a substantial donation to the Academy Students’ Bursary Fund. The trowel was officially received back by Robert Sibson at a ceremony on 25 November 1976 when the Academy Orchestra played Sir John’s Elizabethan Suite, a work which had featured in that Royal Gala 23 years earlier. Since then the trowel has been on display in the Academy foyer and it is now joined by a photograph of Sir John, a permanent reminder of the building’s proud link with one of the very greatest of all conductors.