Australia has produced countless thousands of creative musicians in the past century, including practitioners of jazz in all its many guises. During the years after the Second World War, as Australia began its climb back to prosperity, there was a boom in jazz music. Much of this music was recorded on perishable media such as acetate and tape.

In the mid-1990s a recognition started to grow among the jazz community that there were treasures of recorded jazz in the hands of aging jazz lovers who were beginning to downsize, or to die of old age. An urgent effort started to be mounted, to find these collections and preserve them for future generations. Hence was born the Victorian Jazz Archive, now known as the Australian Jazz Museum, with the mission of collecting, archiving and disseminating Australian jazz.

Today the Australian Jazz Museum has emerged as the pre-eminent jazz heritage organisation in Australia. We at the Museum are well advanced in our goal of digitising our entire collection so that it can be freely shared with the world, as well as supporting and promoting today’s Australian jazz musicians. We are run entirely by volunteers and are completely self-funded, relying for income primarily on membership subscriptions.

We invite you to attend one of our events during Victorian Seniors Week (by appointment), or to drop in for a look around during our business hours at any other time. For details, please call us on 9800 5535 or visit our website: www.ajm.org.au.