The Australian Jazz Museum (AJM) is a jazz museum located in Wantirna, Victoria, Australia.

History

Originally founded as the Victorian Jazz Archive (VJA) in 1996, with the inaugural meeting held at the then Whitehorse Hotel, Melbourne on 18 August 1996, the archive was founded to address the growing concern among the jazz community that the rich

Australian jazz Jazz music has a long history in Australia. Over the years jazz has held a high-profile at local clubs, festivals and other music venues and a vast number of recordings have been produced by Australian jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on ...

heritage was at risk of being lost. In 2014 the archive changed its name to The Australian Jazz Museum to better reflect their role, after several other Australian state jazz archives closed.

Collections

The museum holds an extensive collection of discs, audio cassettes, posters, books, photographs, instruments and ephemera including works by such Australian Jazz luminaries as Graeme Bell, Bob Barnard, Ade Monsbourgh, Smacka Fitzgibbon and Frank Traynor together with magazines, periodicals and newspaper articles on Australian jazz musicians and many international performers. They also hold the Australian Jazz Convention's collection. The building includes a

research library A research library is a library that contains an in-depth collection of material on one or several subjects.(Young, 1983; p. 188) A research library will generally include an in-depth selection of materials on a particular topic or set of top ...

and is open to the public on Tuesdays and also by appointment for tours of the facilities.

Publications

The museum publishes AJazz, a quarterly magazine for members. The magazine began in 1998 as VJazz, before changing its name to AJazz in 2016. They also release a series of CDs titled Rare Collectible Jazz, that collect restored Australian jazz recordings. The series began in 2002, and has included CDs collecting Modern Jazz such as The Australian Jazz Quartet, The Three Out, and Bryce Rohde Quintet, as well as early

Dixieland jazz Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band ( ...

. The CDs are made available for sale through the museum store.

Awards

In 2002, John Kennedy was awarded an MIRA Award for Meritorious Volunteer Achievement due to his work with the AJM. In 2005, the AJM (under its former title VJA) received the Knox City Council's Knox Pride Award for Outstanding Archive of Everything Jazz. In 2007 the AJM received the Victorian Community History Awards (Best Exhibit / Display) for its ''Jazz Spans the Decades – A History of Jazz in Victoria'' exhibit. That same year, AJM member John Kennedy won an award from the Australian Sound Recording Association for "outstanding achievement and leadership in the Jazz Archiving community". In 2009, the AJM received a Community Heritage Award and Grant from

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

. In 2010, the AJM won a Special Commendation in Knox City Council's Environment Awards. In 2012, the AJM received a Victorian Museum Award in the category for volunteer-run museums. In 2013, the AJM received a Sir Rupert Hamer Award for their Jazz Digitisation Project.

References

External links