Jim Minchin

Educated at Camberwell Grammar School, where he studied piano and organ, he later attended Trinity College, University of Melbourne, completing a BA in Classics and a ThL between 1960 and 1966. In those years he became closely involved with the Student Christian Movement. Ordained in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne in 1967, he served at St George’s, Malvern, St Andrew’s Cathedral, Singapore, Trinity College, Melbourne, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

His early composing grew from practical need. In 1962, preparing music for a weekly mission service in Trinity College Chapel, he found little contemporary material to hand and began setting older hymn texts to new, jazz-inflected tunes, experimenting with accompaniment beyond the traditional organ. These works, later linked with “jazz in the church”, reflected both the musical openness of the 1960s and wider Christian movements towards liturgical renewal, cultural engagement, and more contemporary language in worship. Church leaders including Archbishop Frank Woods praised the music for making faith more vivid and accessible across generations.

His writing later moved beyond revised hymnody to settings of texts by modern writers, among them Sydney Carter, and to songs on personal, social and justice themes. Local experimentation drew interest across Australia and overseas. Time in Singapore and Malaysia broadened his artistic and theological outlook, exposing him to diverse musical and literary traditions and leading to his later role as text editor of Sound the Bamboo (2000), a major collection of Asian hymnody. Though much later composing stayed out of the public eye, he returned to performance and recording in later life, bringing the music again to new audiences on discs such as Move Two Mix (MD 3001), Seven Whole Days (MD 3004) and Bards of Faith and Passion (MD 3152).