The Geoff Harvey Collection.

• Author: Watson, Julie
• Position: National Library of Australia

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In October 2008, the National Library of Australia acquired nearly 120 boxes of musical arrangements from Geoff Harvey, who was the Musical Director at the Channel 9 television station from 1962 to 1998. The boxes contained approximately 5000 arrangements of popular music, television program themes, and incidental music used by the Nine Network in both Sydney and Melbourne over the course of Harvey's career.

Represented in this collection are works by 20 or more of Australia's foremost musical arrangers of the time, including Ron Falson, Jack Westmore, Graeme Lyall, George Brodbeck, Alan Deak, Tommy Tycho, and numerous others who wrote their arrangements for a bewildering array of performers on television shows that include the Don Lane Show, the Midday Show, the Graham Kennedy Show, and one of the earliest variety shows on Australian television, In Melbourne Tonight. The earliest item identified so far in the collection is an arrangement of 'What Child is This' by the Melbourne-based arranger Geoff Kitchen, used on IMT in December 1960, and the most recent item is an arrangement of 'Jump, Jive and Wail' by Graham Jesse, performed by George Washing machine on the Midday Show in November 1998.

For the National Library of Australia this acquisition presented significant collection...