Larry Sitsky marks start of 80th birthday year

Fittingly, it was a concert, for Sitksy is one of Canberra's musical treasures, a composer, pianist and educator. He was one of the founding faculty members at the Auatralian National University school of music in 1965 and retired about a decade ago but retains an office there as an emeritus professor.

Regarding the recent upheavals at the school of music he said, ''At the moment it seems like a beast with many heads'' and suggested if those in charge wanted to put the focus on research rather than individual teaching of students - which he acknowledged was expensive - they should announce and make the change.

''They haven't given up the one-to-one but it's not what it used to be.''

The recital was performed at Canberra Girls' Grammar School by students, ranging in age from seven to 16.

It was organised by Suzanne Hewitt, a music teacher who studied with Sitsky in the 1980s, and celebrated one of Sitsky's areas of compositional interest: music for young people.

''There's so much awful stuff they play,'' Sitksy said, ''and they also play what to my mind is even worse, classics simplified. I think if you're a composer you write for children as seriously as you'd write for adults: you don't write down to kids. I've never done it.''

He said he used playful titles - like Here Come the Semitones and Deck of Cards - to stimulate performers' imaginations. In Deck of Cards, for example, the pages of the score are photocopied and shuffled so the order of the fragments is never the same.

Events planned for Sitsky's birthday include a Canberra Symphony Orchestra concert later in the year.