s e l i f o r P i n lA um By Ian Robertson Alumni Manager
Linda entered Korowa in 1967 and during her time at the School, the wealth of opportunities in music offered to her laid the firm foundations for her career in music. Linda went on to study music at university but left in her first year and spent several years playing in rock and new wave/punk bands and cabaret and theatre productions. However, the classical music ‘itch’ compelled her to return to studies in classical piano in the UK in 1984 and then complete her Bachelor of Music (Hons) at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (University of Melbourne), where she also gained her Master’s Degree in Piano and a PhD in Musicology.
Associate Professor Linda Kouvaras (Class of 1977) From New Wave/Punk to the halls of academia!
She never thought she would go back to university and she certainly never saw herself as a musicologist, composer and pianist in teaching and research, where she is now an Associate Professor in Music and Associate Director in Research and Research Training for the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. During her music studies in the mid-1980s, Linda’s tutor informed the class that there were ‘no women composers’ at that time. Linda came to realise that this was patently untrue and she has been galvanised to right the wrongs in perception that still at times prevail - that composers are, by default, all men. She produced the first doctoral feminist study in musicology in Australia (Sweet Death: Strategies of the Feminine Grotesque in a Contemporary Australian Chamber Opera, 1996), and was part of the organising committee for Melbourne’s first Composing Women’s Festival (1994). In contrast to her own undergraduate studies at university – where no subjects ever included any works by women – Linda makes sure that all the classes she teaches include female composers. Linda is also a Senior Resident tutor in Music at Ormond College, a piano examiner for the Australian Music Examinations Board and maintains a select piano teaching home studio. She is the recipient of a number of private and government grants and commissions, her works receiving frequent airplay on radio, in concert, CD recordings and at festivals across Australia and overseas.
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