THE CMAA Academy of Country Music returns to summer, with up-and-coming country artists and musicians returning for intensive tuition in Tamworth in January.
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The academy reverts to its traditional dates of the two weeks before the Tamworth Country Music Festival next year, after spending two years running in winter in the lead-up to the Hats Off to Country Festival, with no academy in 2013.
Academy vice-chairman Roger Corbett said he was pleased to see the academy return to January, with the junior component running for a week leading up to festival and the senior component and new instrumental course running for two weeks.
The instrumental course was added because Roger said he didn’t think they’d been training as much instrumentalists as they would have liked.
“There are guys running around Tamworth (during the festival) who say they only have 27 more gigs to do, and I think the musicians make all the money,” Roger said.
“That is a great opportunity in country music and we hadn’t addressed that in academy previously. The students will be the backing band for the graduation concert, whereas in the past we’ve had session players.”
Roger said it had always been the plan to have only students on the stage for the graduation concerts and this would address that.
Brad Bergen will be the band group leader and he is also an ex-student.
“Brad is a classic example of someone who has made a career out of playing,” Roger said.
“He’ll be a really good tutor and visiting producers are going to come in and unleash different influences on the band, so it’s a unique bit of training they’ll get.”
The senior and junior courses will still run as normal with the senior tutors being Amber Lawrence, Peter Denahy and Kevin Bennett.
“We have a great front bench,” Roger said.
“Amber has moved into the seniors for the first time. She was a student and has been a junior tutor. Pete Denahy will be a senior tutor and he brings his comedy routine which will be very entertaining, but he’s such a great multi-instrumentalist as well and Kevin Bennett is
the other senior tutor, so we’re covering country pop, bluesy rootsy thing, bluegrass and bush ballads.”
For the juniors, the tutors will be Jayne Denham, David Carter and Simon Johnson.
Tamara Stewart is the songwriter in residence and Peter Winkler returns as academy director.
Roger said because academy didn’t run this year, they had students waiting to attend, but were always looking for more applicants.
“I am encouraging crowd funding for the students,” he said.
“We are hoping for 21 senior, 21 junior and 21 parents/guardians and five or six in the musicians course.”
The musicians are getting a bit of a discount off their course, courtesy of Maton, because he said those students had extra instrument costs. Roger said Fender also helped academy out a lot.
He said there was also a plan to expand academy with a standalone business and recording module.
The junior students will graduate on Thursday, January 16 and January 17 is the seniors’ big event.
The senior graduation concert is on the first night of the 2014 Tamworth Country Music Festival.
Applications close at the end of August. Students keen to apply should visit the website, www. academycountrymusic.com.au
