Scotch College

'Lazy Ade' no slouch when it comes to Jazz

Ade Monsbourgh in his element – playing jazz.

A musical career launched with the aid of small harmonicas, given to him by his mother, eventually led Ade Monsbourgh (’34) on to legendary status in the Australian jazz world.

Sunday evenings in Ade’s childhood days would see the Monsbourgh family lined up to play their various instruments, accompanied by some enthusiastic singing. Ade also took piano lessons at about this time, so his course was firmly set on a musical career.

Known to all as Ade and rarely by his full Christian name of Adrian, Monsbourgh gained the ‘Lazy Ade’ tag as his fame grew in the jazz world, because of his easy-going laid-back personality.

But in reality Ade is anything but lazy. Now 89, Ade has been playing, teaching and composing jazz since leaving Scotch in 1934. His primary instrument has been the tenor and alto saxophone, but he is also adept on the trumpet, valve trombone, clarinet, piano and recorder.

At Melbourne University, Ade formed his first jazz band, ‘The Shop Swingers’, in cooperation with his friends Sam Benwell and ‘Spadge’ Davies. As time passed he learned other instruments, recorded extensively, and toured Australia and Europe with the Graeme Bell (’30) band. Later, in the 1960s, he was to help form the Red Onion Jazz Band, which became very well known in Melbourne and around Australia.

In 1946, Ade suggested that a regular festival would benefit Australian jazz. This quickly became an annual event, and 60 years later is still a fixture on the Australian jazz calendar.

In the late 1960s, Ade was asked to set to music some of Australian poet Henry Lawson’s compositions. Singer Shirley Jacobs recorded many of these poems, which included ‘The Bush by Moonlight’, ‘The Shearer’s Dream’, ‘Eureka Stockade’ and ‘A Voice from the City’. A newspaper of the time described the musical poems as ‘lyrical and swinging [with] the themes as modern as today – war, love, loneliness, history’.

During the early 1980s, Ade’s friend John Brown (’33) suggested the idea of ‘Jazz at the Winery’, a musical event set among the vines at the Brown Brothers’ Milawa winery in north-east Victoria. Ade readily agreed to cooperate with John in this venture, and it led the way for similar functions at other wineries throughout Australia. Ade played a number of times at Milawa, helping to make the events very successful.

On Australia Day 1992, Ade was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, ‘for service to music, particularly jazz, as a performer and composer’. In 2003, he was honoured with the Graeme Bell Career Achievement Award at the inaugural Australian Jazz Awards.

Ade now lives with his wife Joan in the northern Victorian town of Nathalia.

David Ashton