I was born in Victor Harbor in 1945 and raised there while it was still a small country town. As a toddler I first learned to love music from old 78 records played on a small wind-up gramophone. My mother sang; my aunt, who was our church’s organist, taught me piano. Both of them performed in the local church and in productions by the South Coast Choral and Arts Society. From their piano stools I played and sang the scores of Handel’s Messiah and Gilbert & Sullivan, lots of ancient popular songs, and later Beethoven’s piano sonatas. 

 

From about age nine I was improvising my own piano compositions and singing my own songs, mostly alone in private. At about eleven I began my lifelong involvement in worship music, and my career as accompanist, by playing harmonium and piano at the Victor Harbor Church of Christ. 

 

My immediate family finished its piecemeal move to Adelaide when I arrived there in 1962. It wasn’t long before I joined the Churches of Christ Youth Choir as accompanist, and worked with them for 15 years in an environment which was formative for many of us. Under John Mathieson’s leadership and in associated youth camps, this included collaborations with other members in new thinking, creative writing for our staged performances. 

 

Meanwhile I completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and English Literature (1963-7); then a Bachelor of Music in Composition and Ethnomusicology (1969-75). I immersed myself in contemporary-classical music, including the new electronic music studio. 

 

In those years I also taught music privately; spent four years with New Opera SA (now State Opera SA) as repetiteur and chorus-master (1973-6). I also began a lifelong involvement with Aboriginal people, firstly through the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM), where I sang with Pitjantjatjara songmen, urban Aboriginal students, powerful Aunties such as Leila Rankine, and we all studied the music with the renowned ethnomusicologist Dr (later Prof) Catherine Ellis. 

 

In 1975 Liz and I married. 

 

In 1976 our lifelong friendship with Rod and Vivi Boucher began when the Youth Choir commissioned Never-Never Yarns from Rod, and I worked with him to write down the musical arrangements. 

 

In 1977 Liz and I joined Greg and Di Pearce to found a small para-church community in Port Adelaide, where we have lived ever since. Six core members of that old group are still continuing with the Port Adelaide Uniting Church: the Schultzes, David and Carolyn Harwood, and Ian and Anne Edwards. David and Ian are guitarists, Ian writes songs, and both have often collaborated with me in creative music. So has Liz; and all my career(s) since 1975 could only happen because of her financial support and her belief in me and my work. 

 

Experiences at CASM led me to a period of political activism in the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights movement (1979-80), but that’s another story. 

 

Over the last 50 years I’ve pursued several intermittent journeys in music and words. Here are some highlights:

 

 • As a piano accompanist, I’ve played for many choirs (e.g. 16 years at Flinders St School of Music), with opera and musical theatre companies, and solo singers. 

 

• As a freelance composer, I scripted, composed and musically directed a full-length musical No Fixed Address for the Youth Choir (1978-9); and performed my Six Poems of Judith Wright with the great Adelaide baritone Rob Dawe (1986). My cantata on Oz folksongs, Songs Further Out, was sung by the Pro Canto Singers at Adelaide Uni (1987). I collaborated with Jardine Kiwat, Grayson Rotumah, three other Indigenous performers and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Music Is Our Culture (1998), and with Nelson Varcoe in my mini-opera Dancing Ngutinai (2002). My Auden song-cycle These Legends, Love was premiered by Norma Knight and Malcolm Day (2008). 

 

• As an environmental sound artist (a subset of the composing), I produced two complete soundscape albums: Sounds Like Work, originally for worship with our local congregation on ‘Industrial Sunday’ (1976), later released as a GoodGod cassette album (1978); and Within Our Reach: a symphony of the Port River (field recordings 1989-1995, CD album 1996). Rod gave me lots of encouragement with both of these, and produced the cassettes, covers and CD booklet. Luke Altmann re-released WOR in 2023, and SLW in 2024 on LP. 

 

• As a community musician, in our early years at the Port I borrowed from many local people their time, original songs, talents and gear to produce community cassette albums: Come On In 1979, Room At Home 1981, Port-Holes 1983 (with mini-soundscapes). I wrote music for Port Adelaide Uniting Church’s production of An Australian Passion 1987; and produced an album of songs by Ian Edwards (Down In Old Semaphore 1991; Ian also has a second album Afghanistan Home, produced by Gerry Holmes in Melbourne 1993). I created a number of ‘Open Pieces’, i.e. musical improvisations for players who can be either skilled or unskilled, and which do not necessarily use musical instruments. Some groups were school-children (e.g. Thukeri the Bony Bream, 1990), others were local community (e.g. the open-air improvisations recorded for Within Our Reach and performed at its launch event, in collaboration with Rod and Vivi Boucher, Gerry Holmes, Ian Edwards, their families and ours, and others). 

 

• I’ve also led community music in the Port church’s outreach, The Cottage Kitchen in the main street of the Port, which was a major commitment over many years for Carolyn, Liz, Anne and other friends such as Val Bennett. The spouses of those four ladies (David, me, Ian and Norm respectively) were often there in support, with me providing music on melodion, keyboard and voice for a party or a project. One of these was Mind Your Head, led by Liz and Meryl McDougal, in which I workshopped serious group music in the ‘open-pieces’ manner for public performances (1999-2000). 

Liz and our daughters Miriam (on clarinet) and Narelle (on flute) were often involved in our community music activities, such as private or public concerts including aged care visits. 

 

• I’ve spent many years as a musician and researcher with local Aboriginal people in their cultural revivals. While teaching music for a while at CASM (1980-1), I found that during my absence in 1979 one of the talented Aboriginal bands studying there had named themselves ‘No Fixed Address’ after seeing a poster of my show! A number of good friends were mainstays of the staff for many years: Ian Knowles, Ben Yengi, Auntie Leila, Guy Tunstill, Ron Nicholls, Doug Petherick, Jardine Kiwat, Grayson Rotumah. Staff and students collaborated with me in research for a book about ‘non-traditional’ Australian Indigenous music (Our Place, Our Music, 1983-9). 

 

• I’ve spent many years in association with people reviving three of the local languages: Narungga, Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna. For them I composed and collaborated in two songbooks (Narungga, Kaurna & Ngarrindjeri Songs 1990; Kaurna Paltinna: a Kaurna Song Book 1995-2000). For the last 15 years, with much help from linguist Rob Amery and his colleagues in Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi, I’ve researched music, place-names, contact history and cultural mapping (many essays and a book of contact history, Feet On the Fleurieu, Language On the Land (2023): all available free on the Kaurna Warra website). And more recently I’ve also been working on similar matters with the late Georgina Williams and her son Karl Telfer (custodians of southern Kaurna) and cultural geographer Gavin Malone. 

 

• Meanwhile, in 1999 Gerry and Jo Holmes brought their motor-home and children to camp on our front lawn for several months, and lead a recording project which drew in a big circle of our friends: a memorable time of support. It was a lot of work but often a lot of fun too. I remember especially the communal plodding stomp of rubber boots for the rhythm track of #29 ‘The Gripe’; it had us in stitches of laughter which kept on subverting the session. Gerry rounded up many willing performers – himself, his family, me, my family, Leigh Newton, Kathy Pike, Rosemary ‘Dib’ Jackson, plus Michael ‘Bob’ Collins from Miriam’s musical circle – and borrowed gear and living-rooms of at least 8 friends, to produce and record the album Jesus, Still Lead On. It came out on CD/cassette in 2000, and as a songbook in 2004 (which is now revised and re-released on this website). JSLO is a diverse range of songs “in and around worship”, mainly mine but not only, selected from my work in and out of church over the previous decades, including some from the old Port community cassettes. 

 

It’s a nostalgic treat to have SONGS-of-faith-hope-and-love website making these songs available again and encouraging me to review my journey in this way.

 

​

Online links: 

Aboriginal place-names essays:  https://www.kaurnawarra.org.au/southern-kaurna-placenames

 

Australian Music Centre:  https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/schultz-chester  

 

Barr Smith Library: digital  https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/110310  

BSL Manuscript collection  https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/mss/schultz/  

 

Feet On the Fleurieu:   https://www.kaurnawarra.org.au/resources-store/p/feet-on-the-fleurieu  

 

Our Place Our Music:  https://www.ebooks.com/en-au/book/290269/our-place-our-music/marcus-breen/?_c=1

 

Sounds Like Work:   https://chesterschultz.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-like-work

 

Within Our Reach:  https://chesterschultz.bandcamp.com/album/within-our-reach

 

Narungga and English song ‘Gurdi’ (Quandongs) arranged for choir: 

https://www.facebook.com/YoungAdelaideVoices/videos/watu-festival-concert-gurdi-by-chester-schultz/2229303080443718/ ; 

also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX73mdI0kWY (at 1h17m38s and 1h49m40s).