Music SA Appoints Christine Schloithe as Chief Executive

Christine Schloithe is the new CEO of Music SA.

With effect from Monday, May 23, Schloithe will join the team and work alongside Music SA Chair John Glenn, its board, and the trade body’s staff to forge a “new strategic plan and road map for the next few years,” reads a statement.

Schloithe will be tasked with helping build, activate, and strengthen the state’s contemporary music sector both “within the context of COVID, and looking forward to the future of South Australian music,” the statement continues.

Schloithe has an extensive background across organisational management, arts and cultural programming, producing, touring, festival management and stakeholder engagement.

She brings to the role a resume that includes experience in performing arts, music, festivals and major events, cultural heritage and post-graduate qualifications in cultural tourism, most recently serving as senior advisor, arts policy and programs for the department of Premier and Cabinet.

Schloithe slots into the top job at Music SA following the recent departure of two major players, chair Anne Wiberg (after nine years) and general manager Kim Roberts (four years).

Earlier in the year, the peak body named Glenn as chair, a music professional with a 30-year background within music, the arts, government and not-for-profits.

“Christine is an outstanding appointment for us as our new CEO and will bring together a fresh and united Board and an invigorated office working with a new state government to rejuvenate the Live Music Industry that has been traumatised by the pandemic,” Glenn notes.

The experience that “Christine brings to the organisation in change management and organisational growth is exactly what we need right now, and I am very excited to see where the next few years will lead us.”

The organisation will shortly announce additional appointments to the board, the statement adds.

Schloithe’s appointment comes at a time of opportunity for the music industry in South Australia, which, like all other states, is opening-up to live entertainment and, in March, welcomed a Labor government that won in an election landslide.

Labor’s arts strategy includes $3.25 million in See It LIVE grants for promoters, consisting of $5,000 each for 100 club gigs, 25 grants of $500,000 each for theatres and wineries, and five grants of $250,000 each for major events.

A further $250,000 to Support Act provides wellbeing workshops for SA music workers, while Adelaide Fringe gets a $2 million annual boost.

As South Australians went to the polls, Secret Sounds and Live Nation announced a $6 million investment in Hindley Street Music Hall, a split level complex at 149 Hindley Street that LN anticipates will become Adelaide’s “premier live music hub.”

Despite its geographic isolation, Adelaide, Australia’s fifth-most populous city, has a rich music history.

The SA capital is the first, and only, designated UNESCO City of Music in Australia, and, in recent years, Adelaide has hosted Indie-Con and the AIR Awards.

The status of live music in South Australia is considered so important, British festival promoter and “live music thinker” Martin Elbourne was engaged by the Dunstan Foundation to write a report on it, the results of which published in 2013.