ArtSound Newsletter — April 2025

A lot is happening at ArtSound.

Read on for news about:

  • ArtSound Annual General Meeting
  • Anzac Day radio drama
  • Call for radio-drama scripts
  • ArtSound collaborates with Australian Muslim Voice
  • ArtSound forms production unit
  • Pacific Neighbors
  • Canberra Southern Cross Club Sponsorship
  • Garden Jazz Concert
  • Donor appreciation event
  • A guest at the station
  • Support the Young Virtuoso Competition
  • ArtSound’s podcasting meetup
  • Nick McBride in China
  • Writing prizes
  • ArtSound’s 2025 Membership and Fundraising Drive
  • How You Can Help

ArtSound Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of ArtSound Inc., the Association that operates ArtSound FM, will take place on Thursday April 10 at 7pm in the McDonald Room at Eastlake Football Club, 3 Oxley Street Griffith.

We urge all financial members to attend. Come along to meet your fellow members and have a say in the direction of our station.

Eastlake Football Club supports us; you can support them by joining us in the bistro for dinner before the meeting.

Anzac Day radio drama

On Anzac Day, April 25, at 1pm, ArtSound will broadcast Wanterwrite, Wanterlove: Love & Loss at Tuggeranong, the ArtSound Radio Players’ production of Peter Stanley’s play based on historian Charles Bean’s writing of the history of Australia’s involvement in World War I.

Bean and his assistants undertook the work at Tuggeranong Homestead, located in what is now the suburb of Richardson, beginning in 1919.

Well-known historian Peter Stanley is a research professor at the University of New South Wales who was formerly Principal Historian at the Australian War Memorial. He has published more than 40 books, fiction and non-fiction, including Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force (2010), which was the joint winner of the 2011 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. He is a commentator on Australian military history for ABC TV and radio as well as various commercial channels.

Wanterwrite, Wanterlove is his first radio play. While a work of fiction, it draws heavily on the actual history of Charles Bean’s life, particularly the writing of the first volume of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, which ran to 12 volumes and took 20 years to complete.

ArtSound’s Bart Meehan directed and produced the radio play with a cast of ArtSound Radio Theatre players: Adam Salter, Stefanie Lekkas, Millie Hayes, Peter Fock, and Dick Goldberg. It will air first on Anzac Day at 1pm, then again at 4pm on Sunday April 27 and 10pm on Monday April 28. In addition to the play, which runs for about 40 minutes, the program will include an interview with Peter Stanley about Charles Bean.

Image: Bean, left, with his team at the Tuggeranong Homestead, 1922; National Library of Australia

Radio plays wanted

You, too, could be featured in an ArtSound Radio Players production. If you have a script that would be suitable for radio, or even an idea for a radio play but you’re not sure where to start, get in touch with ArtSound Radio Theatre, which airs Sundays at 4pm (repeated Mondays at 10pm). The highly experienced troupe may be able to help. Write to help@artsound.fm.

Collaboration with Australian Muslim Voice

Every year during Ramadan, ArtSound collaborates with Australian Muslim Voice Radio to assist with their temporary broadcasts. This involves setting up a complete radio studio in a private residence in Narrabundah, linking it via Internet to a low-power transmitter that is installed at Black Mountain, and monitoring the quality of the broadcasts over the month of Ramadan. ACMA issues a temporary licence for such organisations and AMV makes a donation to ArtSound to cover Internet expenses.

Thanks to Chris Deacon and Rodger Bean for undertaking this work.

ArtSound forms production unit

In recent months, ArtSound has formed a communications unit to help get the word out about our activities and events. (One result is Angela Pagliaga’s striking posters you’ll have seen about the place and about town.) Now we’d like to do something similar around production — specifically, production of promotional and sponsorship (advertising) announcements, along with short items to drop in among our regular programming. The latter could be, for example, segments about Canberra-region arts, culture, history, architecture, social services… They could be anything that fits into our overall programming ethos.

ArtSound has the production capacity, and producers already working in this area of content creation. If you’d like to join them, or have ideas to share, get in touch via help@artsound.fm. You can always set to work on ideas we’ve already had.

Pacific Neighbours

ArtSound is preparing a new weekly radio program featuring the music and culture of Australia’s Pacific Neighbours.

To date, we’ve recorded episodes with diplomats from the embassies of Colombia and New Caledonia, and have lined up some others.

We’re defining “Pacific Neighbours” quite liberally, casting our net as far afield as South East Asia to the northwest and western South America to the east.

If you’re from that broad region, and knowledgeable about your nation’s musical heritage, and would like to take part in the program, please get in touch. You can then work with an ArtSound producer who’ll do all the techie stuff while you simply choose about 48 minutes of music and then talk a little about it and your country’s music.

Please get in touch via help@artsound.fm.

Pictured: Mario Corredor, Second Secretary at the Embassy of Colombia to Australia (left) and Jorge Leiva, who was in town from Melbourne with his band La Descarga and took part in the recording.

ArtSound’s Canberra Southern Cross Club Sponsorship

ArtSound has rejoined the Canberra Southern Cross Club’s Community Rewards Program, which helps our listeners contribute to ArtSound. You can do that by nominating ArtSound to receive part of what you spend on food and drink at the Club’s various locations. All you have to do is click this link: https://csccmarketing.wufoo.com/forms/m1ti98210e4gdsx/ and add your CSCC member details. Then every time you buy food and drinks at the CSCC, the club will donate 7.5% of your bill towards ArtSound’s equipment upgrades and other expenses.

This small gesture from you can make a big difference to the station.

Garden Jazz Concert

On March 16, we held our last outdoor concert of this summer and autumn in the Manuka Arts Centre gardens — we’ll have more of them starting in the spring,

Thanks to everyone who came to the event, and huge thanks to the musicians who performed for us: vocalist Rachael Thoms, guitarist/bassist Lachlan Coventry, saxophonist Danny Junor, and our own Nick McBride, drummer and host of Down in the Basement every other Monday.

We’ll have some more concerts, indoors, over the cooler months. The first one is tentatively scheduled for June. Stay tuned.

(Image: Rachael Thoms and Lachlan Coventry perform; photo: Michael Catley)

Donor thanks

In March, ArtSound thanked some generous donors at an event in the Manuka Arts Centre gardens. Guitarist Connor Whyte, 2023 winner of the ACT finals of the Young Virtuoso Competition, provided entertainment (photo: Michael Catley)

ArtSound thanks all its supporters, who contribute in many ways. To join them in supporting ArtSound, please get in touch via admin@artsound.fm or 6395 7444.

A guest at the station

A guest in the studios, last month, was violinist Ragini Shankar, who performed a stunning concert of Hindustani classical music the next day, Saturday March 15, at the Wesley Music Centre. Accompanying her was tabla virtuoso Pandit Ramdas Palsule, visiting from India, as Ragini Shankar was. ArtSound’s Ainsleigh Sheridan interviewed her during Arts Café.

Young Virtuoso Competition – can you help?

Each year, ArtSound hosts the ACT regional finals of the Young Virtuoso Competition, which identifies outstanding Australian classical music performers.

Could you help ArtSound to stage the ACT leg of the competition? We’d be most grateful for sponsorship covering the cost of sending the ACT winner to competition’s the national finals. This year, those will be in Adelaide. We cover the regional winner’s travel and accommodation expenses to attend.

If you can help, please contact us at admin@artsound.fm or phone 6295 7444 Monday-Friday 10am-2pm.

(Pictured: 2024 ACT winner Zachary Li)

ArtSound’s podcasting meetup

Members are invited to attend ArtSound’s fortnightly Podcasting Meetup. It’s an informal meeting of podcast enthusiasts who gather to discuss and plan podcast skills and content.

The group generally meets every second Monday from 5:30-6:30pm in ArtSound’s dedicated podcast studio; the next meeting is scheduled for Monday April 14.

To inquire about joining in, write to podcast@artsound.fm.

Nick McBride in China

Every other Monday on Down in the Basement (8-10pm), your host is Nick McBride, a drummer who graduated from the Canberra School of Jazz when it was housed in what is now the Manuka Arts Centre. Large audiences in China got to hear Nick in recent weeks, too. He and his colleagues in the band RGP— Westerners living in China, Australia and the United States, and three Chinese friends — performed in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Nick reports that the venues were impressive and exotic, and audiences enthusiastic and warm.

By the way, Nick’s co-host on Down in the Basement is Col Hoorweg, a retired longtime professor of jazz studies at the ANU. You won’t hear more knowledgeable observations on jazz and other percussion anywhere in the country.

Writing Prizes

MARION, the ACT writers association, has launched its inaugural Finding Beauty Poetry Prize, established to honour Roger Green (1955-2024), an environmental advocate, writer and editor, lover of poetry, and thinker. His family has established the Finding Poetry Prize in his memory. Entries can be submitted via the Marion website. They close at midnight on Monday 19 May 2025. Marion will announce the winner on Thursday 3 July 2025 at the ACT Literary Awards in Canberra.

Marion is also receiving entries until Monday 28 April for the Anne Edgeworth Emerging Writer’s Fellowship 2025, provided annual by the Anne Edgeworth Trust. It offers up to $5,000 to advance its recipient’s writing development.

The fellowship, in the fields of poetry, fiction writing, nonfiction writing, screenwriting, or playwriting, honours and was set up by the family of the late Anne Edgeworth (also known as Anne Godfrey-Smith), a prominent poet, writer, theatre director, academic, conservationist and activist for reconciliation. She compiled a vast archive of recordings of poetry readings and other literary events in the Canberra region until her death in 2011; the recordings are divided between the ArtSound Archives and the ACT Heritage Library.

2025 ArtSound membership marathon

Through all of 2025, ArtSound is running a membership drive.

Currently, membership accounts for about 10 percent of the organisation’s annual income. We’d like to double that.

Membership fees are modest: individual membership, $75; family membership $110; concessional membership (with seniors or student ID) $50 per year.

For a limited time, new members will receive a free copy of the latest ArtSound Press publication, Gertrude’s Sweetheart: Monologues for Readers and Actors.

Already members receive 24/7 radio every day of the year, but we’d also like to increase the number and range of businesses that will offer discounts to our members. We’ll list these on our website’s membership page. Can you help us to identify or recruit such business supporters? If so, please write to Bart Meehan (help@artsound.fm) with details (including any contact details, if you have them).

Donations

We’re always grateful to receive donations to support our work, which includes featuring about 1,000 ACT-region artists on air annually along with specialty programming that supports and fosters arts activities in the ACT region.

ArtSound does this as an all-volunteer community radio station with expenses to run to more than $110,000 each year, about half of it from the costs of transmitting to the ACT from Black Mountain and Mt Taylor.

If you can help, please do so. Simply use the QR code below to go directly to the ArtSound donation page. Or get in touch to talk about how you might help: admin@artsound.fm or 6295 7444.

To maintain the independence of our services and sound financial well-being, ArtSound relies on your contributions to preserve the quality of our service to you and others.

Ways you can help

Do you have skills that you’d be willing to lend to the ArtSound cause? Please let us know. Here are some areas where you might be able to help – or perhaps you have skills that we don’t know how to profit from, until you tell us!

Welcoming Committee members

Communications unit

Production unit (producers and assistants)

Management and financial wizards

Advertising reps

Presenters

Concert recording engineers

Music library helpers

If you can help, please send your contact details and a description of how you think you can help to help@artsound.fm. Or phone 6295 7444 weekdays between 10am and 2pm.

If you associate with artists of any kind, you could promote the station to them.

 

A supporter called to see if anyone at ArtSound could help her elderly father get better sound. ArtSound’s Kit Scally responded by refurbishing a pair of Heybrook HB3 speakers. Photo: Julie Finch-Scally

 

ArtSound FM’s mission is to cultivate a vibrant arts community in the ACT region. Your memberships and donations sustain our year-long programming including our artist-centred features and interviews and our many broadcasts of live recordings of concerts in and around Canberra.

Thank you for being part of ArtSound!

Please go online to artsound.fm to take out membership or donate.

Or phone (02) 6295 7444 — if you don’t reach someone right away, please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Donations of $1 or more are tax deductible.

ArtSound is an all-volunteer community radio station.

 

Please forward this newsletter to any possibly interested friends and family members. And if you have any suggestions about items to include in this bulletin, please send them to newsletter@artsound.fm at least three days before the end of the month.