Antony Jeffrey AM
Short Biography
Antony Jeffrey qualified as a chartered accountant and worked with Price Waterhouse in Australia and the UK before commencing a career in the arts.
In 1975, he was engaged as the first Music Board Director at the Australia Council, the federal funding agency for the arts. In 1978 he became Commercial Manager of The Australian Opera, where over five years he established and developed Australia's most successful arts sponsorship program.
Between 1984 and 1989 he was the first CEO of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and in 2001, after an absence of 12 years, he was asked to assist the Board of the ACO as Business and Planning Consultant at a time when the orchestra was going though a period of severe management and financial difficulties which have now been overcome. He worked with the ACO in this capacity for five years and played a major role in turning the company around to its current artistic and financial success.
Since 2006, he has been General Manager of the Song Company and recently relinquished the role to resume his consulting work. For the previous 10 years, he worked as an independent consultant with his own consultancy ABG Australia Pty Ltd in arts executive search, mentoring, strategic planning and short term management. Most recently he recruited the CEOs of the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Sydney Film Festival, Stalker Theatre Company, the Sydney Youth Orchestra and the director of marketing for Melba Recordings.
For several years in the 1990s he worked for Price Waterhouse as an executive search consultant where he recruited senior and chief executives for companies, government agencies, and arts and business organisations.In 1992, in association with Price Waterhouse, he developed and directed a major cultural and trade promotion in Indonesia for the department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia Today Indonesia 94, comprising 60 events taking place in five Indonesian cities. In 1995, he planned and managed a similar promotion Australia India New Horizons which took place in several Indian cities in 1996, also under the auspices of the department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In 1998 he was asked by the Olympics Business Round Table to advise on the establishment and development of the Australian Technology Showcase, a highly successful public/ private sector collaboration to facilitate the international success of Australian technology companies, and for several years was chief adviser to the program.
He has played a key role in the development of arts festivals in Hobart (10 Days on the Island) and with Roland Peelman in Newcastle (Loud Mouth) and acted as general manager for the Sydney Film Festival in 2005. In 2006 he was engaged to oversee strategic planning as well as mentoring the artistic director of the Canberra International Chamber Music Festival.
Throughout his career as an arts manager and consultant, a dominating feature has been his work to link business and the arts. After his period with The Australian Opera, he established Business Arts Connection which for 10 years brokered arts sponsorship and undertook arts/business assignments including:
- Management of the Mobil Business in the Arts Awards for many years
- Publication of a seminal handbook about arts sponsorship 101 Good Ideas for assisting the Arts
- A major study and subsequent publication The Enterprise Program into business/arts advocacy and incentive programs, which led to the establishment, through Australia Council funding of Australian Business Support of the Arts (ABSA), which later led to the establishment by the Keating government of AbaF to which he also became an adviser.
In 2004, Antony Jeffrey was asked by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust to undertake an oral history of the Trust, the most influential player in the performing arts in the last half century. He has undertaken over 70 recorded interviews with leading artists and arts managers for this project and subsequently with the SBW Foundation.
He has been a consultant to many of Australia's leading arts organisations including the Australian Ballet, Melbourne Theatre Company, Art Gallery of NSW, Lyric Opera of Queensland, Musica Viva and many others. He has chaired or been a board member of many arts organisations including Sydney College of the Arts, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Stalker Theatre Company and Sydney Philharmonia.
