Move Records

22 November 2018

Move is 50! Here's a 50-year history

Golden Jubilee of Move Records: 1968—2018

How the years rolled by:

1968
• At the Bill Armstrong Studios in Albert Road, South Melbourne, fresh-faced English migrant Roger Savage (direct from work on a Stones LP) negotiates the final mix-down for an LP of modern church music by Jim Minchin. The title is Move Two Mix. The producer is Martin Wright (in charge of the Media Department at Melbourne’s forward-looking Presbyterian Bookroom). Lead singer is Margaret Haggart, a rising star in the Victorian Opera Company. Directing the music is Nick Alexander - a friend of Jim Minchin’s from Trinity College. The record is a hit, and Martin and Nick decide to form Move Records. The business name was registered on 24 December 1968.

1969
• In London on a trip overseas, Martin secures the rights to a record of carols by Donald Swann. In New York, he secures the rights to the immensely popular records of the Medical Mission Sisters.

1970
• The Medical Mission Sisters Joy is Like The Rain becomes a hit in Australia and is followed up with further LPs. Jim Minchin records Seven Whole Days in Singapore and Melbourne.

1971
• Move signs up English poet and songwriter Sydney Carter for a series of releases. His song “Lord of the Dance” is known throughout the world.

1972
• Move brings Sydney Carter to Australia for a concert tour to promote his recordings. Short films are made for four of the songs (which can now be viewed on the Move website).

1973
• Organist Douglas Lawrence remembers blazing away on the St Patrick’s Cathedral organ in the dead of night whilst recording the first-ever LP of Australian organ music. Reverberations contains tremendously exciting contemporary music from Keith Humble, Felix Werder, Ron Nagorcka and Ian Bonighton and includes a brass quartet in one piece and electronic tape in another. • The first recording of folk-singer Margret RoadKnight is released. Margret is recorded live at Frank Traynor’s famed folk club in Little Lonsdale Street.

1974
• Martin discovers a Canadian recording of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat written by a little-known duo called Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. He secures the rights to release it on the Move label in Australia.

1975
• Move secures the rights to release an ABC recording of the world-touring Rosny Children’s Choir.

1976
• Move makes the first recording of Ormond College’s new mechanical-action organ built by Ronald Sharp. At the keyboard is Douglas Lawrence, now one of Australia’s most widely travelled concert organists. The record, The Best of Pachelbel, is a hit with the critics, and it sells well enough for a couple of re-pressings. • Move undertakes an ambitious recording project with the assistance of the Australia Council … a two record set of the works of Australian contemporary composer, Ian Bonighton, tragically killed in 1975. Leading Melbourne musicians including Keith Humble, Len Dommett, Rosslyn Farren-Price, John Seal, Alex Grieve, Donald Scotts and Phillip Green take part.

1977
• Move releases a version for piano, four hands of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with Ronald and Rosslyn Farren-Price. The controversial cover features a daring painting by Mirka Mora, and the record is banned from display in one of Melbourne’s leading retailers. • To boost its Christmas sales, Move records 15 Favourite Christmas Carols with organ, brass and tubular bells, arranged and conducted by Jesuit trainee Christopher Willcock.

1978
• Move turns to jazz and records an album with pianist/composer Tony Gould. Gould plays Gould is recorded in Sydney at EMI’s Studio 201 with John Sangster on vibraphone and conducting a string orchestra. • For another LP, Barry Conyngham presents for the first time some electronic music by Percy Grainger (‘Free Music”) written in the 1930s, long before the means to perform it was available.

1979
• Organists from all over Australia contribute to the inaugural recital series of the largest mechanical action organ in the world — Ronald Sharp’s new instrument at the Sydney Opera House. Some of their best performances end up on disc. • Early music group La Romanesca approaches Move in the hope of releasing a first recording. The group has only been together eighteen months but is rapidly carving out a niche in Australian concert life. The outcome is Love Lyrics and Romances of Renaissance Spain, recorded in the studios of La Trobe University’s music department, and its issue marks the beginning of a longstanding and fruitful partnership between Move and the group.

1980
• The days before ABC Classics had ABC recordings appearing on various labels including Move. Move releases opera singer Alan Light’s Great Bass Ballads, as well as Peter Sculthorpe Piano Music (with an unfortunate cover that made Peter look much older than he was at the time).

1981
• Environmental “free form” composer Ros Bandt climbs into an empty wheat silo with a collection of instruments. Move releases the intriguing results on Improvisations in Acoustic Chambers. • La Romanesca’s second LP Medieval Monodies is recorded by Martin Wright during the summer in the chapel of Ormond College. The recording is a stunning success, despite the interference of creaking rafters and noisy crickets which causes more than one recording session to be abandoned to the forces of nature. • Peter Chapman directs the choir Cantus Choro in a selection of classic hymns entitled Sing out with Joy with well-known actor and organist Norman Kaye providing dramatic accompaniment. The LP is an immediate success. Tony Gould and Colin Hopkins record a two piano album in Flagstaff Studios.

1982
• With Medieval Monodies released, La Romanesca embarks on the group’s first European tour. Among the trophies it brings home from its concerts in Portugal is a contract from the Portuguese government for Move to supply bulk copies of the disc for use in schools and universities for the teaching of medieval Portuguese literature.

1983
• The newly formed Choir of Ormond College directed by Douglas Lawrence is recorded on Move’s new digital recording equipment. But with no digital editing available, everything must be recorded perfectly in one take. • Ros Bandt plays her glass bell “flagong” in the Ballarat Art Gallery producing the LP Soft and Fragile (later expanded on the CD Glass and Clay).

1984
• John Stinson and John Griffiths approach Move concerning their plans for the Fourteenth Century Recording Project, a research project to produce recordings of 150 French and Italian works never previously recorded. Funding from the Australian Research Council is forthcoming. This is, in itself, a landmark as the ARC has never previously supported a research project whose outcome includes recordings. La Romanesca is to be the nucleus of the Ensemble of the Fourteenth Century. Recording begins in earnest in early 1985 and lasts until 1990. Monday nights, come rain, hail or shine are spent in the crypt-like atmosphere of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne. • Popular contemporary a cappela group Polyphony records its first LP at Move. Shortly afterwards all but one of the group’s singers change, and the group renames itself The Phones which did not help long-term sales.

1985
Jazz singer-composer Linda Cable records a superb jazz-rock-fusion album Ya-de-ya!

1986
• The LP is almost dead and Move’s catalog of 60 or 70 black vinyl records is rapidly becoming obsolete. Eighteen years worth of back catalog ready for the junk heap. The new compact disc format has taken over the classical market, but CD is still too expensive for a small label and none are being manufactured in Australia. • Cantus Choro’s second recording of hymns, has St Patrick’s Cathedral reverberating to the sound of spectacular brass, choir and organ. Seven top symphonic brass players played arrangements specially written for the occasion. • One of Move’s last LPs is Ronald Farren-Price’s recording of Debussy’s Preludes Book 1. It is recorded on Sunday mornings, very early, to avoid traffic noise. Nevertheless Ron must contend with an accompaniment of birds which have to be dodged in the editing. We also film videos of him playing selections of the Debussy. In the Great Hall at Montsalvat (Eltham, Victoria) we record an album of guitar and flute.

1987
• Compact disc at last — Australia’s first CD factory opens. It is a new beginning. The Music of the Fourteenth Century is to be Move’s first venture into the production of a series of recordings. Volume 1, Two Gentlemen of Verona, the music of Giovanni da Firenze and Jacopo da Bologna is one of Move’s first CDs. This same year, La Romanesa’s Medieval Monodies is re-issued on CD, one of a batch of four recordings that marks Move’s arrival in the CD age. • Also released is Barry Conygham’s opera Fly, with its sensuous score. One critic described the opera as a rival to “Voss”. Margaret Haggart is in the cast, making a return appearance on Move after a 17-year gap.

1988
• Digital recording gets smaller with the arrival of DAT which make remote location recording possible. • Douglas Lawrence adds 35 minutes of playing time to his Festival of Organ Masterpieces for CD release. • Well-known composer George Dreyfus finally makes it onto the Move label with the first of a series of releases that include the theme from the ABC television series Rush. Other arrangements of Rush are destined to be included on later CDs. • Move also records a cassette for children by Fay White entitled Did you see the wind today? which includes many songs made famous by ABC radio’s Kindergarten of the Air.

1989
• Douglas Lawrence persuades Martin Wright to go Manila to record the world’s one and only bamboo organ. The event is the annual Bamboo Organ Festival, and in spite of being held up and getting robbed on the streets of Manila (only of money, not the vital recording equipment!), Martin manages to get enough recorded to make a CD. Only one recording session is possible for the solo items late one night, with bats flying across the ceiling, noisy motorbikes outside, and complaints from nearby residents about our noise. • Recording Melbourne Windpower in the Melbourne Concert Hall is full of surprises during the sessions - tour groups being paraded through, noise from the lifts, trams, electrical circuits and backstage hydraulic pumps, cleaners, light bulb changers and even a bomb scare! Designing and photographing the cover for a Move CD is great fun. The cover photo is shot at the first windmill on the left going north on the Hume Highway. To get into that paddock the musicians climb ladders over high fences and end up standing in the mud up to their ankles. The wind is howling and it is freezing – but the cover is a success and overseas people always remark that to them it “looks Australian”. In New York City’s Tower Records, Richard Runnels asks for a CD by Melbourne Windpower. The salesman is sorry – they had some but are all sold. We probably sold more in New York than Sydney. • Stargazer is Ros Bandt’s latest epic. This one is recorded deep below Collins Place, one of Melbourne’s tallest buildings. The architect Peter Mills must have designed the car park’s spiral ramp around a hollow cylinder especially for Ros. The massive cylinder has a reverberation time of around 12 seconds, twice that of St Patrick’s Cathedral. • Do you know who Australia’s first pop recording star was? Jeff Brownrigg of the National Film and Sound Archive discovers 500 sides recorded between 1907 and 1914 and picks 23 of the best songs. The name? Australia’s Billy Williams.

1990
• Every Delight and Fair Pleasure, Volume 2 of The Music of the Fourteenth Century is completed late in 1989, and is released early in 1990. Its production marks the end of the “old way” of producing CD masters digital recordings to reel to reel tape which were then edited with a razor blade; Dolby SR noise reduction is employed to protect the digital fidelity. This recording is the fruit of countless Friday mornings of editing and listening during which time John Griffiths becomes a regular part of Move’s Friday furniture. The remainder of the 150 recordings sit on the shelf at Move awaiting the installation of an Apple Mac-based computer digital editing system which is up and running in the second half of the year. • Attempting to record Hamilton Town Hall’s piano (one of the best Steinways in Australia), Martin and the Team of Pianists are defeated by cicadas. The Team also records additional works to make Peter Sculthorpe Piano Music complete for CD re-release. This time the cover reflects the cultural influences of Australia and Japan on the composer. • Finding a quiet, beautiful, resonant venue has always been a challenge, and Xavier College Chapel with its high curved ceiling is a real “find”. Move records Images in the building with flautist Prudence Davis, oboist Jeffrey Crellin and guitarist Peter Lynch. In spite of being recorded in the cold of winter, the result is warm – wonderfully played music. • Two Sydney composer-performers, Colin Offord and Tony Lewis each release a disc – Pacific Sounds and Passage.

1991
The cover for Richard Runnels’ Horn Destinations features an Aussie outback signpost, showing not distances to places all over the world as you might expect, but points to the various composers on the recording when you examine the sign. The photographer looks for suitable locations in the country near his farm at Yea. Richard isn’t happy with any of them, but then as he returns to the photographer’s place and drives up the driveway he sees the perfect spot. The sky co-operated too!

1992
• Brilliant young organist Thomas Heywood spends months preparing to record on Melbourne Town Hall’s Grand Organ. The result, Melbourne Sounds Grand, brings special praise locally and internationally for performance and recording quality. • For the Spanish Quincentennary, La Romanesca returns to the studios, producing Iberian Triangle, a recreation of music of Christian, Moorish and Jewish Spain prior to Columbus and, to some extent a voyage in the uncharted waters of historical fantasy. The lights of Melbourne University’s Melba Hall are set to their dimmest position for the late night recordings where the group sit in seance with a long disappeared musical past, and attempt to conjure the moods so often only inspired by the interactive presence of a live audience. More than any other of their recordings, this is the one that captures La Romanesca at the peak of their creativity, and that approaches the magic of their best live performances. • The cover of Melbourne Windpower’s A Night at the Opera is photographed in front of the curtain in the State Theatre. The group is all dressed as famous opera characters, costumes courtesy of the Victoria State Opera. There have been several competitions for people to name all the characters, but so far no one has been able to get them all correct. • A major milestone: Move builds a studio in order to achieve a recording space with friendly resonant acoustics, free from traffic noise. The first recordings take place in a hot December.

1993
• Martin and Sue Wright traipse over Europe with the Choir of Ormond College recording concerts and sessions in some wonderful acoustic spaces. One critic was most impressed by this Australian choir for its ability to pronounce German better than German choirs! • Early instrumental music group Cantigas records Silk and Spice which sells well as the group tours the eastern seaboard. • The first recording of a symphony composed in Australia almost 100 years ago is conducted by Warren Bebbington. This valuable contribution to Australia’s musical history is Symphony (Marshall-Hall). • A two-CD set Complete Bach Flute Sonatas is launched by Richard Divall. It features Canberra-based Vernon Hill playing his gold flute and Roger Heagney playing his Alastair McAllister harpsichord.

1994
• Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre publishes the first volume in its edition of early Parisian polyphony, in conjunction with the University of Melbourne. Move produces Haec Dies, a recording of this nearly 800-year-old music sung by early music group Les Six. • Musician and composer Vaughan McAlley joins Move Records as a sound engineer. Having effectively failed his year of composing electronic music as part of his degree in Composition, he is well-positioned to learn music recording and editing from scratch. He becomes a favourite engineer of many Move artists. • Two extra grand pianos are delivered to the Move studio to record Teamwork, an album of music for two and three pianos by the Team of Pianists.

1995
• Vaughan tours Europe as a singer with The Choir of Ormond College. On top of a hill in Sion, Switzerland, they record their CD Music from Heaven, featuring the effortless high Cs of soprano Nina Wellington in Allegri’s famous Miserere. • Martin travels to the Barossa Valley in South Australia to record a dozen of the historic German organs there. John Stiller and Christopher Dearnley share the task of playing the old instruments. There’s a more modern organ at Monash University’s Robert Blackwood Hall on which we record Calvin Bowman performing the complete Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) which takes up two CDs. • Jazz pianists Tony Gould and Bob Sedergreen release Unanimity, an album derived from one of their famous piano-duet concerts. Gould draws inspiration from classical music, and is best known for beautiful contemplative solos, and Sedergreen is Australia’s finest blues player, able to get a room jumping. Their only ‘rehearsal’ is working out which songs to play and in which key. By listening and responding to each other they create something truly special. • Move re-releases The Best of Pachelbel from 1976, combining it with Douglas Lawerence’s album Buxtehude as Pachelbel, His Canon, and much More. Lawrence returns to the now expanded Ronald Sharp organ in the chapel of Ormond College to add Pachelbel’s celebrated Canon in D Major. • Douglas Lawrence and Elizabeth Anderson make the only available commercial recording Bolero: for organ four hands on the 1982 Melbourne Concert Hall mechanical action Casavant organ which was removed in 2010 during renovations of the venue, now named Hamer Hall.

Goldbergs
Gerald English
Genevieve Lacey
Jacky Ogeil
Trio Melbourne
Cantigas
RFP
SOH organ (Organ at the Opera)

1996
• Mark Viggiani records The Rainmaker, an album of guitar music that stretches the primitive 4-track version of Pro Tools to its multitracking limits. Later versions of Pro Tools boast a virtually unlimited number of tracks, eliminating the need for the dreaded “bounce down”. Martin heads of to Canberra to record Joan Chia playing the National Carillon.
• Before her untimely death in 2001 Mietta O’Donnell started the Mietta Song Recital Award, the winners of which were recorded by Move every year until 2000
• The recently-emigrated piano duo Igor Machlak and Olga Kharitonova record Bon Voyage, a collection of music for piano 4-hands that combines well known music with excellent but little-known music from Russia.

Welsh Male Voice choirs
Capella Corelli
Melb and Concordia Mandolin orchestras

1997
• Pot Pourri’s second album, Something Familiar! Something Perculiar!, utilises Vaughan’s skills in arranging and performing, as well as sound engineering. • One of Vaughan’s university composition lecturers Brenton Broadstock records Bright Tracks, a double album of his chamber music. The double CD wins the 1998 ABC Listener’s Choice Award. • Harpsichordist Elizabeth Anderson records Bizarre or baRock. Before it came to denote a music period, the German word ‘baroque’ meant ‘bizarre’. Anderson wanted to do “something WILD!” after her straight-laced recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The album includes baroque pieces mixed with pop songs and jazz pieces, many recorded with drums and bass. The album’s cover features her posing as Morticia Addams.

Tony Gould orchestral
New Monash Orchestra (Andre de Quadros) 3 releases

1998
• Martin does an all-night recording session with organist Sergio de Pieri at St Mary’s Star-of-the-Sea in West Melbourne. Fortunately Vaughan, who is living the next block down at the time, doesn’t have a raucous all-night party. The recording is released in 2000 as Star of the Sea. • Peter Tahourdin, another of Vaughan’s composition lecturers, records Exposé, an album of his chamber music at the Move Studio, with performers including Jeannie Marsh, Peter Neville and Michael Kieren Harvey. Harvey, the perennial enfant-terrible of Australian contemporary piano music, will form a long and fruitful partnership with Move, producing more than twenty CDs. Peter Tahourdin dies in 2009.

George Dreyfus (Marvellous vol 2)
Team of Pianists
Adelaide Town Hall organ
La Romanesca
Andrew Blyth
David Joseph
Thomas Heywood (St John’s) all night session

1999
• In the absence of another suitable tenor, Vaughan gets into character as “a lonely desert man”, and sings a respectable high B flat on Tuneful Percussion, a recording of Percy Grainger’s pioneering music for tuneful percussion by the percussion ensemble Woof! • Virtuoso recorder player Genevieve Lacey records two, an album featuring baroque and contemporary music, as well as traditional songs with Danish percussionist Poul Høxbro.

Mark Pollard
Sonny Chua

2000
• Melbourne Symphony Orchestra tuba veteran Ian King returns to the studio more than forty years after his first recordings were made. Tuba Magnifique (released in 2001) contains recordings from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as new pieces recorded at the Move Studio.
• Douglas Lawrence records an album on the brand new organ at Scots’ Church Melbourne. Built by renowned Austrian firm Rieger Orgelbau, the large organ has four manuals and a section on the balcony at the back of the church. The organ’s versatility is represented by baroque and romantic music from Germany and France.

Eve Duncan
Stephen McIntyre

2001
• The 1803 shooting of a London lawyer in the buttock is commemorated by Elizabeth Anderson’s album The Convict Harpsichordist. After a reprieve, the shooter, John Grant, arrived in Sydney Cove in 1804 with Australia’s first harpsichord. Anderson plays music that Grant might have played, and an atmospheric piece by contemporary Tasmanian composer Ron Nargorka. Anderson’s husband Douglas Lawrence dons his breeches to appear in the cover art.

McJad (Ormond)
Dreyfus film music vol 2
Sangster open reels
Linda Cable (Tabula Rasa)
Adelaide Town Hall

2002
• Tony Gould pairs up with jazz vocalist Emma Gilmartin to create the extraordinary Tomorrow, just you wait and see, an album that could be described as entirely quiet and contemplative. WIth both performers in their element, this unusual concept works brilliantly.

RFP Schubert
Pablo
Ormond Choir Xmas
Syd. Uni. carillon / organ (Amy/Jill)
MKH Rave Negra

2003
• Composer Elizabeth Drake comes to the Move Studio to create a soundtrack album from her music for Sue Brooks’ film Japanese Story, featuring Toni Collette. It becomes one of Move’s biggest sellers.

Thomas Reiner (Conversations / Hard Chamber) resound
MKH Australian
Cezary (soundtracks)

2004
Martin and organist Rhys Boak travelled to Ballarat to record a number of the historic organs in the city producing a CD entitled Organs of the Ballarat Goldfield.

Sangster Lord of the rings
MKH Messiaen
Kew Band (Dreyfus) at Watsonia
Nicole Canham

2005
• Douglas Lawrence and the Choir of Ormond College come to the Move Records studio to record their final album Laughing, a collection of mainly secular music. Many crowd-pleasing favourite encores and after-party pieces are included. It it released in 2006.

2006
• Throat singer Dean Frenkel records Cosmosis, combining the 14000 year-old technique of throat singing with (variously) synthesizers, piano, vibraphone, thumb piano, other vocalists, and the thoat-singing Bendigo Youth Choir. He also releases his distinctively bound book The 8th natural wonder. • The final volume in John Sangster’s Lord of the Rings series is prepared for release from a mixture of original master tapes and cleaned-up LP record transfers. • Pianist Judith Lamben starts recording a large collection of Bach keyboard works resulting in two double CDs (English and French Suites)

Cameron Roberts
Alan Lee
ProArte (Julian Yu) Pictures
Tony Gould Trio
MKH Nock and Sitsky

2007
• An ensemble including didgeridoo player William Barton records Australia’s contribution to the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Composers include Brenton Broadstock and Julian Yu. • George Dreyfus heads back to Germany to record brand new stereo soundtracks to four episodes of the 1960s childrens television program Sebastian the Fox. The music is married to a brand-new film transfer and released on DVD, along with bonus episodes and documentary involving some of the people involved with the series.

Liz Anderson follows up with More Bizarre or Barock
MKH Okamoto
Tony David Imogen
Emma Sidney
Louise Page is back in the studio
Daniel McKay
Gordon Atkinson
Kathryn Moorhead
Amir Farid
Peter Sheridan

2009
• Pianist Amir Farid records Veiled Virtuosity, his first of many albums at Move Records. The famous pianist Geoffrey Tozer attends one of the recording sessions and offers Farid valuable advice. Tozer dies before the CD is released.
Edwin Paling and Arabella Teniswood (award Gramophone)
Larry Sitsky Russian Rarities
Megan Reeve

2010
• Cellist Zoë Knighton records Mendelssohn Cello, the first of a series for Move. She is joined by Amir Farid on piano. • Tony Gould solo piano recorded a new solo piano disc - The Lucky Ones.
Anthony Halliday
• Michael Kieran Harvey records his major composition 48 fugues for Frank (Zappa).
Kathryn Moorhead and Megan Reeve record music for flute and harp.
Unique arrangements of the music of Astor Piazzolla for La Tin Shed Orquestra are recorded in the studio.

2011
• Producer Peter Marks teams with Tony Gould to create Seasons of Love, a CD of classic songs lushy arranged by Graeme Lyall and sung by the talented Gian Slater and Eddie Perfect. (Published 2013)

Eve Duncan
Michelle Nelson
Pot Pourri
Tallis Stephan Cassemenos
Zubin Kanga

2012
• Winners of the 2012 Mietta Song Competition soprano Siobhan Stagg teams with her competition pianist Amir Farid record Hymne à l’amour, a collection of romantic art songs. Siobhan has since sung lead roles in Berlin, Amsterdam, Chicago and Covent Garden • Tangomundo, an ensemble led by Argentinian violist Guillermo Anad, records a haunting collection of tangos by the Argentinian master Astor Piazolla on their CD Todo Buenos Aires. They record further albums in 2014 and 2015.

Daniel and Anthony
MKH Psychosonata
Christopher Trikilis

2013
• Vaughan travels to Monash University to record the Monash University Flute Ensemble’s CD Fantasie Australis, directed by flautist Peter Sheridan. The ensemble is recording Vaughan’s composition Chaconne, and Peter asks Vaughan to conduct. Vaughan’s first-born child due that day, but happily she waits another two days to be born.

Tamara Smolyar
Rhys and Bruno (Collingwood and St Michael’s)
Liz and Laura

2014
• Lachlan Redd records Pieces from Childhood, containing youthful works of the late Geoffrey Tozer, in conjunction with Tozer’s estate. One hundred manuscripts were found after Tozer’s death in 2009, and were published under an imprint created by the precocious Tozer himself at the age of eight. • Michael Kieran Harvey records Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (straightforward), and then Julian Yu’s epic set of 126 variations on the song (not so straightforward). Understandably, the variations encompass almost every imaginable style.

Robert Schubert
Douglas Lawrence’s Australian Chamber Choir
To mark the death of Peter Sculthorpe we record a new arrangement of his Little Suite, played by the Concordia Mandolin Orchestra
Derek Jones Sculthorpe
Amir Maroufi

2015
• Not yet finished with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Julian Yu solicits further variations from composers around the world. They respond in dazzling and imaginative ways. Michael Kieran Harvey records these to produce 70 More Variations on “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

Tango Mundo
Amir and Zoe (Russian Cello)
Chris Young
RFP - CD release of Debussy Preludes Bk 1
Derek Jones
Ted Vining (+ Bob and Gareth)
Stuart Greenbaum (Amir)

2016
• With Amir Farid having departed Australia to work at The Julliard School, Zoe Knighton is now joined by distinguished pianist Ian Munro for an album of Scandinavian music for cello and piano. As well as music by Sibelius, Vasks and Pärt, the album contains Grieg’s epic and rarely-heard Sonata in A minor Op. 36. • Peter Tahourdin’s two daughters compile a second volume of their father’s music from a variety of archive tapes, and new recordings in the Move studio.

Peter Sheridan and Judy Diez d’Aux
MKH and Emily (Bob Brown)

2017
• A follow-up collection of Geoffrey Tozer’s mature works, Pieces after Childhood, is recorded by Lachlan Redd. It showcases Tozer’s love of counterpoint, and naturally requires virtuoso technique from Redd. • Alone in the studio for a change, Zoe Knighton records the six solo cello suites by JS Bach for her acclaimed double album Bach Cello.

Monash Flute Ensemble (including Tony Gould overdub)
Cutetudes
Robert Schubert (Julian Yu)
Latitude 37
Luz Meridional

2018
• Inventive composer Sally Greenaway lands in Move’s studio along with Syzygy Ensemble and Dan Richardson to record 7 Great Inventions of the Modern Industrial Age, complete with sound effects and entertaining variety of musical styles. • Vocalist Gian Slater returns, with Zoe Knighton and pianist Sonya Lifschitz to record Life Cycle, a cycle of songs by British composer Emily Hall about the experience of becoming and being a mother. Slater tinges the classical music with jazz stylings, and the performers draw on their experience of motherhood to deliver a very moving performance. (I can’t work out if Sonya is a parent or not though) • Martin works with Michael Kieran Harvey and Arjun von Caemmerer to produce Move 50, a collection of 24 works by Australian composers. Most of the pieces are especially composed for the album and pay tribute to Move Records in some way. Vaughan manages to write a 1'37" piece using just 50 notes.

MKH Green Brain (Hobart)
Move turned 50 years old in late December

2019
This year Move spent a whole 12 months being 50.

SUMMING UP

• So right from the start, up to the present and into the future, Move is producing recordings by Australian artists, often by Australian composers. Move now records most of what is released on the label rather than rely, as it did in the early years, on outside recording engineers and studios. Move has its own digital recording equipment, computer-based digital editing system, and new studio, which is large enough for chamber music groups. The studio was in response to a need for a pleasant resonant acoustic space not troubled by traffic noise and air conditioners which plague many on location recordings.

• In 50 years, Move Records has released around 500 titles, most of which are still available on compact disc, iTunes and Apple Music. To celebrate, we invited Australian composers to compose a short work to celebrate the milestone. It is titled Move 50. The CD has 24 new works performed by various local artists, most especially Michael Kieran Harvey.

“Excitement, joy, frustration, but finally lots of beautiful recordings. Yes, Move has been a big part of my life … This recording company should be declared a national treasure.” – Douglas Lawrence.

“It is with great pride and enthusiasm that Move leads confidently into the 21st century with a host of Australia’s finest artists recorded to date and more to come.” – Tony Gould

Further reading