From New England, to New Zealand, to the Riverina, the musical work never stops. And the enjoyment of it all doesn’t either. Having arrived home last night after completing 13 hours of travel, I think I am more than ready to complete a long awaited blog update.
NZ Tour
The New Zealand tour with the University of Newcastle Wind Orchestra was an incredible experience, and a pleasure to be involved with an ensemble performing at a professional level. While many of the old guard had left, it was great to see some past members still performing and to meet and make new friendships with those emerging through the ranks either in their late secondary or early tertiary studies.
At the Aurora Music Festival, the UNWO was awarded the gold medal for its round of performances by the panel. Prior to the performances, the UNWO and St Lukes Grammar School ensembles had workshops with the conductor of the Arizona State University Wind Symphony, Gary Hill. The workshops Gary lead were a pleasure to watch (and be a part of) from a teaching perspective, and certainly provided me with a few new skills and perspectives on teaching and learning.
Apart from the wind orchestra music, we also had the opportunity to perform “The Klezmer Suite” arranged and composed by Alexis Ciesla with a clarinet choir formed from the ensemble. This suite has its challenges, and these were all overcome in the space of an hour! Fingers crossed this group can remain together and continue performing clarinet choir music.
Many thanks to Cookie for giving Emelia and myself the opportunity to travel and view the sights of New Zealand.
New England/Riverina Band Camps
Prior to New Zealand, the New England Band Camp was held. And a couple of days ago the Riverina Band Camp concluded. Both of these camps were quite an experience and really blew me away by the talent that these regions have, how far they have come from, and the new talent beginning to emerge.
This year, the shoelace ligature has played a massive role and influence on single reed players as students and teachers are intrigued by the improvement it makes. The majority of people who have tested this are very pleased by its enhancement, while everyone who has taken part in testing the shoelace have noticed a great difference and some sort of improvement to tone and control in the different ranges of their instruments. This coming week will see the NSW Senior Ensemble (Years 9-12) taking part, and there certainly will be students travelling down using this new technique (with a lot of fingers pointing back to me). In the near future I will detail an entry explaining why I use the shoelace ligature and why I find it to be better than certain ligatures that you would pay over $100 for!
The repertoire for both camps was more challenging, including the advanced band. Both camps handled the repertoire incredibly well, but it left a question to be asked after the Riverina camp; how come, with both camps at similar levels of ability, the Riverina kids absolutely chewed through the standard repertoire moving into the advanced band repertoire and the New England kids didn’t? I’ll be quick to point out that both clarinet sections I worked with were fantastic from the solo chair down to 4ths and bass, and that both ensembles were similar in ability all round. It was absolutely bizarre.
The tour video was finally shown to the Riverina kids, and there was a very good response all round. It took me right up to the final evening that I left on for Tamworth, to format the video so it could be re-converted for DVD. There are still a couple of sections I would edit, or get the audio to line up with the video, but everyone enjoyed the various sights and sounds presented and took encouragement from the concert performances and the various words of Di Hall (whilst she was driving).
That's my update for now. Soon I will be posting more in relation to the shoelace ligature and a few of my compositions in the works.
Showing posts with label concert band. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concert band. Show all posts
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Friday, May 8, 2009
Riverina Band Camp (Part Two): The camp itself
The first part was typed from the futon in my lounge room, but this second part will be typed from the bedroom today as I am sitting in bed sick. There was a flu flying around to staff from the Riverina camp and it looks like it has caught me. No, it's not swine flu so I should be alright. The weather wasn't the best with it being cold and wet, but this did not dampen anyone's spirits.
With 55 students in attendance, slightly down on numbers, and some of the senior students absent, the general thoughts from all of the staff was that this was a very successful camp. And if you don't believe the staff, then perhaps you could ask the parents of the students that attended the rehearsal given or even the regional director who was noticeably pleased and full of praise for the program.
Essentially the same repertoire was brought from New England to Riverina, although a couple of other charts were taken out and replace by others. An advanced ensemble was formed with several representatives for the state wind bands next month. There was a mentioning from the director that in the 65 person senior ensemble, there were 13 representatives from Riverina. This is a fantastic achievement.
I don't think you could have asked for a better group of students than what we had. I was very impressed with the students we had last year, but this year everyone took their discipline, ensemble skills, and performance skills to a new level. The staff didn't even have to patrol the rooms in the freezing cold past midnight to make sure everyone was going to sleep.
The clarinet section I was given was well balanced and supportive of each other. We had students ranging from year four through to eleven with different levels of ability. Normally there is a saying that your group/team is as strong as its weakest participant; the weakest link effect. However, ability was no boundary to the students that took part as it became more about a question of commitment and effort over effort. We had some little clarinets in the third row, but they kept giving their parts a real good go and achieved a lot of aspects about their playing by the end of the week. Who would've thought that the third row of young ones would be playing 3-5 star charts with the rest of the band by the end of the week?! Two bass clarinets went from sounding like one thin instrument to a section of four by the end of the week. The only disappointment I had was that I didn't really get to work with the first clarinets as much as I would have liked to. With that said, the first clarinets did take on some responsibility of their own learning about leadership within a section and overseeing a whole ensemble (i.e. the concert band). If we can get more clarinets next year then I would be all for a second clarinet tutor to come along in attendance.
Another great selection of staff. Everyone worked really with their sections, and even unearthed some new talents and abilities of their own. No, I'm not referring to the students within sections. The Riverina camp would have to have the best table tennis players you have ever come across. Two of the DET staff emerged victorious over two of the travelling tutorial staff in high level competition using budget paddles and a stiff wooden net. Over twenty games were played with the DET staff winning by 2-3 games. There are currently discussions about hosting a table tennis camp next year with concert band for sport and rec.
The Riverina touring ensemble has been selected, and the state nominations will be made based on the students attending the tour. Good luck to all the students that will be taking part in the tour later this year.
As the Riverina camp came to a close, the North Coast camp started two days later on the 3rd of May. With students attending from the Clarence Valley, I will be very interested to hear what they have achieved and what the current program is like. They will be holding their recital tonight at Lake Ainsworth giving a concert to the parents. Last year was an incredibly low point in the North Coast program, so hopefully there will be some improvement.
With 55 students in attendance, slightly down on numbers, and some of the senior students absent, the general thoughts from all of the staff was that this was a very successful camp. And if you don't believe the staff, then perhaps you could ask the parents of the students that attended the rehearsal given or even the regional director who was noticeably pleased and full of praise for the program.
Essentially the same repertoire was brought from New England to Riverina, although a couple of other charts were taken out and replace by others. An advanced ensemble was formed with several representatives for the state wind bands next month. There was a mentioning from the director that in the 65 person senior ensemble, there were 13 representatives from Riverina. This is a fantastic achievement.
I don't think you could have asked for a better group of students than what we had. I was very impressed with the students we had last year, but this year everyone took their discipline, ensemble skills, and performance skills to a new level. The staff didn't even have to patrol the rooms in the freezing cold past midnight to make sure everyone was going to sleep.
The clarinet section I was given was well balanced and supportive of each other. We had students ranging from year four through to eleven with different levels of ability. Normally there is a saying that your group/team is as strong as its weakest participant; the weakest link effect. However, ability was no boundary to the students that took part as it became more about a question of commitment and effort over effort. We had some little clarinets in the third row, but they kept giving their parts a real good go and achieved a lot of aspects about their playing by the end of the week. Who would've thought that the third row of young ones would be playing 3-5 star charts with the rest of the band by the end of the week?! Two bass clarinets went from sounding like one thin instrument to a section of four by the end of the week. The only disappointment I had was that I didn't really get to work with the first clarinets as much as I would have liked to. With that said, the first clarinets did take on some responsibility of their own learning about leadership within a section and overseeing a whole ensemble (i.e. the concert band). If we can get more clarinets next year then I would be all for a second clarinet tutor to come along in attendance.
Another great selection of staff. Everyone worked really with their sections, and even unearthed some new talents and abilities of their own. No, I'm not referring to the students within sections. The Riverina camp would have to have the best table tennis players you have ever come across. Two of the DET staff emerged victorious over two of the travelling tutorial staff in high level competition using budget paddles and a stiff wooden net. Over twenty games were played with the DET staff winning by 2-3 games. There are currently discussions about hosting a table tennis camp next year with concert band for sport and rec.
The Riverina touring ensemble has been selected, and the state nominations will be made based on the students attending the tour. Good luck to all the students that will be taking part in the tour later this year.
As the Riverina camp came to a close, the North Coast camp started two days later on the 3rd of May. With students attending from the Clarence Valley, I will be very interested to hear what they have achieved and what the current program is like. They will be holding their recital tonight at Lake Ainsworth giving a concert to the parents. Last year was an incredibly low point in the North Coast program, so hopefully there will be some improvement.
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