The Canberra-born Australian Chamber Orchestra Artistic Director Richard Tognetti took to the microphone on Saturday night to criticise the Australian National University’s proposal to “disestablish” its School of Music.

Any such move, said Tognetti to the audience gathered for the ACO’s touring Gershwin & Shostakovich concert in the ANU’s Llewellyn Hall, would be an “act of cultural vandalism”.

“Let us hope in marking the School of Music’s diamond anniversary, we are not also preparing its obituary,” Tognetti said. “But if the current trajectory continues, that is where we are heading.”

Richard Tognetti. Photo supplied

Revealed in July, the university plans to merge the 60-year-old School of Music into a new School of Creative and Cultural Practice within the College of Arts and Sciences, alongside the School of Art and Design and the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies. The restructure, which will see a number of academic and staff positions cut, has been widely criticised, with students and staff staging protests. 

During Saturday’s concert, petitions circulated through the audience in the intermission and afterwards.

Cuts to the ANU...