The improviser: Vanessa Tomlinson is our music-making new head of The Con
As the first woman to head the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, Professor Vanessa Tomlinson is determined to lead by ‘doing’ – and that means she’ll continue to perform and compose.
Sometimes leadership roles can stymy creativity, but Vanessa Tomlinson is determined to keep performing and composing as she takes the reins at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.
Known affectionately as The Con, it’s an institution that has produced some amazing artists – Katie Noonan, Brett Dean, Kate Miller-Heidkie, Jayson Gillham and many others – and it’s right in the cultural heart of Brisbane at South Bank.
Tomlinson is the first woman to take on the role and she follows Bernard Lanskey, an internationally acclaimed pianist who is moving into a professorial role.
Tomlinson, a professor of music and currently head of percussion, has toured the world playing and often performs alongside her husband, fellow musician Erik Griswold, who lectures in music studies at The Con. The pair are a fixture on the avant-garde fringe of the music scene and her ensemble with Griswold, Clocked Out, is renowned and always unpredictable. So, she’ll still be making music? Damn straight.
“I will continue to play,” Tomlinson tells me after finding out she will now sit in the big chair at The Con. “Leadership can be creative and I’m an improviser. I think that will be great to model for the students. And I have the opportunity to bring all sorts of guests here. Music is all about collaboration and meeting new people.”
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Tomlinson feels that it is “a good time to have an internal candidate, to draw on all that local knowledge and build on that as we head towards 2032”. There was an international search but it’s gratifying that talent already on hand was acknowledged.
Pro Vice Chancellor (Arts, Education and Law) and Assistant Vice Chancellor (Cultural Curation and Community Partnerships) Professor Scott Harrison says the university is “delighted to advise that Vanessa Tomlinson has agreed to serve as the next director of Queensland Conservatorium”.
“Vanessa’s bold vision places music-making at the centre: performing, composing, improvising, curating, directing and collaborating,” Prof Harrison says. “She has toured the world for 30 years, premiering hundreds of works as a percussionist, musicking with scores of musicians, presenting work at major international festivals and sharing her knowledge as a teacher, mentor, researcher, university academic and arts advocate.”
Her diverse contributions to leadership include as the inaugural director of Creative Arts Research Institute (2021-2024), vice-chair deans and directors of creative arts (2022 – 2023), festival director of Tyalgum Music Festival (2017-2020) and music curator and artistic director of Easter@Piano Mill (2015-25). She co-convened the national Artistic Research Summit at University of Sydney (2025), represented Australia at Classical Next, Berlin (2025) and has released three albums this year.
Her research centres around exploratory, place-led artistic practices that have delivered large-scale collaborative projects such as The Listening Museum (at UAP), Beacons (Bleach Festival), The Immersive Guitar (with Karin Schaupp, Hassan Karampour, Bruce Wolfe and Jim Redgate) and Channelling Dulcie’s Piano (with Jesse Budel and Greg Harm).
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As a foundation member of the Climate Action Beacon at Griffith, Tomlinson has developed projects that examine the role arts play in environmental justice, including Peak Plastique (with Erik Griswold and Anna McMichael) and a new collaboration premiered at ANAT Reciprocity, 30×30 Out of Time.
For the past 20 years her ensemble Clocked Out has been making and touring work internationally and has developed a deep cultural relationship with Sichuan Province in China, producing two touring productions, The Wide Alley and Water Pushes Sand that investigate disappearing folk music practices.
She was part of the ARC project Making Music Work and has received further grants through Creative Australia, Arts Queensland, Brisbane City Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs, among others.
‘one of the reasons I have stayed for so long, besides the ever-changing students, is because of the staff at The Con’
Her work has received the Helpmann Chamber Music Award, two Green Room Awards, Vice-Chancellors Research Excellence Award, Aria Nominations and seven APRA/AMC Awards. She has been artist-in-residence at The Smithsonian Institute (US), Civatelli Ranieri (Italy) and Asialink (China).
Yes, she has been busy – and happily so. Tomlinson says The Con is an inspiring place to work and lists some of the things that happen there.
“Classical music, pop, jazz, composition, opera, technology, music theatre, acting, research,” she says. “And one of the reasons I have stayed for so long, besides the ever-changing students, is because of the staff at The Con. It is an incredible team with phenomenal international experience across performance, composition and research. And, of course, the university is super supportive.”
The Con is never boring and on any given day Tomlinson says you can hear “guitars amplified, high-pitched flutes and oboes playing … maybe a brass player playing some Wagner in the courtyard. It’s an amazing sonic world”.
“And the students get to hear all that,” she says. “It’s learning through osmosis and we really back our students to excel. We put them on big stages at Brisbane Festival, Queensland Music Festival and QPAC. We dare them to do extraordinary things.”
She says she is humbled by the appointment.
“And it’s not insignificant that I am the first female head,” she says. “I can give an extra nudge towards equity.”
griffith.edu.au/arts-education-law/queensland-conservatorium