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Montsalvat’s artist-founder, Justus Jörgensen, took his inspiration from the villages of France, but the Montsalvat he built with artist friends and families, notably the prodigiously talented Skipper family, is fashioned out of the clay and stone of this beautiful Eltham hillside, and pieced together with many remnants of Australia’s architectural heritage. Look through the larger bay window in the Upper Gallery and you might learn that it once graced the Victorian Insurance Building. Lean against the great wooden uprights in the Barn Gallery and you will be told they were once wharf timbers from Wollongong.

A guided tour of Montsalvat is like an archaeological dig into art and architectural ingenuity. And if you look up into the trees you can sometimes see works wrought out of natural materials by twenty-first century artists whose passion for the local environment extends into fashioning its twigs and vines into art to make children stare in wonderment.

Montsalvat prides itself on being a place where art is made and taught as well as exhibited. It has long been home to men and woman whose hands and minds can conjure beauty out of wood, clay, stone, words, charcoal, ink, paint, canvas, metal and marble, and who are adept at passing on their skills to others. Montsalvat offers art classes, studio places and short-term residencies to a wide variety of artists, experienced and aspiring.

Matcham & Sonia in the Workshop

The Great Hall by Bill McAuley

Myra Skipper

Barn front before fire

Sonia Skipper at Montsalvat, 1955, Sarah Chinnery_SLV

Justus behind the Great Hall

Great Hall Under Construction, 1939-45, Albert Tucker_SLV

Justus Jorgensen boat, April 1956, Henry Talbot_SLV

Matcham Skipper at Montsalvat c1939-45, Albert Tucker SLV

Montsalvat Ephemera
From the Greek ephemeron, meaning “lasting only a day.” Ephemera refers to items created for a short-term purpose.

 

The Montsalvat Ephemera Project seeks to recover and share the rich history of concerts, festivals, and cultural events held at Montsalvat over the past three to four decades, beginning in the early 1970s. This initiative highlights the creative legacy of Sigmund and Sebastian Jorgensen, sons of Montsalvat founder Justus Jorgensen. After returning to Montsalvat in the late 1960s and early 1970s following years in London and Europe, Sigmund and Sebastian, drawing on their extensive experience in the performing arts, revitalized the site with a diverse program of cultural activities, including classical music, jazz, poetry, theatre, and traditional Indigenous Australian songs and dance.

Led by Fabrizio Calafuri, who collaborated on producing many Montsalvat events over two decades, the Ephemera Project has worked to recover and preserve archival material including posters, handbills, videos, and audio recordings that document these significant events. With support from the Nillumbik Council Community Grants Program, these materials have been digitized and restored, ensuring they remain accessible to the wider community.

This project also marks 90 years since Montsalvat’s beginnings in 1935. Montsalvat’s distinctive buildings, along with the paintings, sculptures, and stone carvings created by the artists who lived and worked here, stand as a testament to its unique artistic heritage. Yet the performing arts are inherently fleeting, disappearing the moment they are experienced. The Montsalvat Ephemera Project preserves a small but vital record of these cultural moments, ensuring the spirit of Montsalvat’s events lives on for future generations.

 

The Montsalvat National Poets’ Festivals and Poetry & Song Festivals

The Poets’ Festival founded at Montsalvat in 1977 was a nationally significant gathering of poets from all over Australia, supported by the Australia Council Literature Board and by Arts Victoria. From 1977 to 1979, Fabrizio Calafuri was artistic director, program manager and publicist. Montsalvat poet-in-residence Geoffrey Eggleston provided advice for inviting writers. Sebastian Jorgensen advised the musical components and Sigmund Jorgensen was the general manager.

With the poetry movement at a high point both in Australia and overseas in the 1970s, the long weekend Festival attracted crowds of 800 people each day to hear readings from almost every poet in Australia, interspersed with musical performances, often involving collaborations between writers and musicians. The 1979 Festival expanded to a week-long program and included weekday programs focused on children’s writings, which attracted attendances of over 400 students per day over morning and afternoon daily sessions.

Fabrizio retired from the Poets’ Festival the end of 1979 and Michael Duggan was hired to work with Geoffrey Eggleston for the 1980 festival. While smaller than the earlier events, the 1980 festival had acclaimed American writer Gary Snyder and the highly honoured Australian writer A.D. Hope as special guests.

After 1980, the Poets’ Festival went into hibernation for quite some time. It was revived in 1992 in a downsized version of the earlier 1970s and then from the late 1990s it morphed into the ‘Poetry and Song Festival’.

The Montsalvat Jazz Festival

Later to be known as the Montsalvat Melbourne International Jazz Festival, ran in January each year, for nine years from 1988-1996. It was founded by Sigmund Jorgensen and had several prominent Australian jazz identities as artistic directors; Allan Leake (1988-93), Bob Sedergreen (1994-5) and Ted Vining (1996).

The Montsalvat Jazz Festival presented international headliners alongside major and newly emerging Australian jazz musicians. By 1996 the Montsalvat Jazz Festival had grown so big it had to expand its program into Melbourne venues such as Hamer Hall at the Vic Arts Centre, the State Theatre, Melbourne Town Hall, the Forum Theatre and Southbank.

Major sponsor Mazda held naming rights from 1988 to 1993. From 1994 till 1996 the naming rights sponsorship was taken over by Vic Health. The early Jazz Festivals were broadcast on ABC TV. Later jazz festivals were broadcast by SBS TV.

In 1997, the Montsalvat Jazz Festival transitioned into the Marvellous Melbourne Jazz Festival, to be run by Sigmund’s former co-organiser of the Montsalvat Jazz Festival Mal Harrop. In 1998, the Marvellous Melbourne Jazz Festival was renamed The Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

Sebastian Jorgensen Classical Guitar

Sebastian Jorgensen (1938-2019), son of Justus Jorgensen, was a very accomplished classical guitarist who began learning classical guitar at the age of 11, alongside his childhood friend John Williams (now an internationally acclaimed guitarist).

Sebastian was a prize-winner at the International Guitar Competition in Castellammare di Stabia in Italy and spent a decade performing classical guitar concerts in the UK, touring with the renowned guitarist Timothy Walker. They played at major classical music venues and in 1967 they featured alongside Jimi Hendrix and the famed Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco Pena and legendary folk music guitarist Bert Jansch in the ‘Guitar-In’ concert event, held at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Sebastian returned to Australia in 1971. He lived at Montsalvat, where he gave guitar lessons, and later, with his growing family, at Montsalvat’s farm property in Christmas Hills.

From 1974, Sebastian regularly contributed solo guitar concerts to Montsalvat’s annual programs of musical events. From 1978, Sebastian started to curate concerts at Montsalvat that included other guitar or string instrument players. Artist Carol Onley, a resident of the Montsalvat Christmas Hills Farm, produced large, colourful screen print posters for these events. These posters continued to reference the classic, gothic typeface consistent with other Montsalvat events, but were larger and more impactful and experimental in design.

After artist Carol Onley relocated from Christmas Hills to live in Gippsland at the end of 1978, artist Felix Borsari became a regular collaborator with events at Montsalvat, both in designing posters and handbills and also as a journaling artist who attended many concert performances and drew black line images and colour pastel sketches of the artists and audiences.

In 1985 Sebastian Jorgensen developed and curated the Montsalvat Guitar Festival. It featured the world-renowned classical guitarist Timothy Walker a guitar duo from Poland ‘The Name’, lutenist Roger Treble and chitarrone (large bass lute) player John Norton in solo and duet performances as well as guitar master classes and instrument making demonstrations. It is not known if the Montsalvat Guitar Festival was repeated after 1985.

Waak Waak Jungi   

In the mid-80s David Gulpilil and a troupe of songmen, dancers, yidaki (didjeridoo) and clapstick players from Arnhemland were hosted by Montsalvat to perform and give workshops over a weekend, as part of a national touring program of traditional cultural song and dance, supported by the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs.  

The famous Aboriginal Australian award-winning film star and others from his group stayed between Montsalvat and the Christmas Hills Farm, hosted by classical guitarist Sebastian Jorgensen and singer Sally Grice, with their two children, Rhiannon and Saxon, in the week of preparations for the event. They exchanged stories and shared their interests in music and song. David Gulpilil asked Montsalvat to continue cultural exchanges with his community in northern Australia and invited Sebastian, Sally and others to visit him in Ramingining.  

 

Five years later, in the winter of 1991, Sebastian, Sally and their two children along with their frequent touring companions Fabrizio Calafuri and Gwenyth Broug, went north to stay with David Gulpilil in Ramingining, Arnhemland, as part of a wider tour of the NT organised with support from the NT Arts Council.   

 

In the aftermath of this cultural exchange in Ramingining, at David’s request, a tour of Victoria was organised for an Arnhemland cultural program led by David, to be hosted by Montsalvat, with David and his troupe residing at the Christmas Hills Farm for the length of the tour, which was eventually six weeks.  

 

‘Music from Arnhem Land and Christmas Hills’ at Montsalvat  

In November 1991 an open-air concert event of ‘Music from Arnhem Land and Christmas Hills’, alternating classical guitar and traditional Arnhem Land performances, was presented in the main courtyard of the Montsalvat Great Hall, to a large audience on the hill. It was videoed and a VHS copy found among Rhiannon Jorgensen’s archives was restored and copied digitally. 

After that concert in November 1991, David Gulpilil recommended two senior songmen from Ramingining for continuing music collaborations with Sebastian. According to traditional protocols of the Yolgnu people of north-east Arnhem Land, one would be of Dhuwa and the other of Yirritja moiety.   

 

Music of the Elders at Montsalvat  

In early 1993 Bobby Bunungurr (Dhuwa) and Jimmy Djamunba (Yirritja) came south with their traditional songs to collaborate musically in two ‘Music of the Elders’ concerts in Montsalvat’s Great Hall, one afternoon and one evening, sharing the program with Sebastian Jorgensen classical guitar, Sally Grice vocals and Peter Mumme on keyboard soundscapes, sometimes playing in ensemble and sometimes performing separately.   

Montsalvat Music-Theatre Productions 

 

Sebastian Jorgensen had “always been interested in theatre, having worked (in theatre) in the 1960’s. One day he announced in my (Montsalvat) office that he wanted to present a production of a passion play (for Easter in 1973), aptly called ‘The Killing of Christ’. We presented it in the Great Hall… Almost every year thereafter he would come up with a new production”. (Sigmund Jorgensen’s ‘Montsalvat’, p.133). 

In line with his fondness for the rhythm of 5 pentatonic scale, Sebastian set about the task of producing 5 music-theatre productions for Montsalvat. Sebastian’s next music-theatre production in the Great Hall at Montsalvat in 1974 was ‘King Oedipus’, which was a contemporary adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King, by Sophocles. 

 

These partially restored archival photos from that 1974 production in the Great Hall show actor Chris McQuade in the role of Oedipus’s mother Jocasta, and Montsalvat’s Marcus Skipper joining as Oedipus. 

 

The 3rd in the series of 5 productions was ‘Yin Yang Yankee’, performed in the Montsalvat Great Hall in 1975. The set up was a carnival-showground-styled match of boxing and martial arts between two Chinese adversaries, Mao Tse Tung and Confucius, promoted and presented by the USA’s Uncle Sam (played by Marcus Skipper), with Lao Tsu in the role of referee at the centre of a raised boxing ring, built inside the Great Hall, atop of the heavy oak tables that used to be in the Hall.

 

The 5th and final production in the 5-series of music-theatre performances devised by Sebastian Jorgensen for Montsalvat was ‘Jack the Dancer’. Presented in February of either 1977 or 1978 at Montsalvat, it was performed next month in Adelaide as part of the Adelaide Festival ‘Fringe’. 

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