Victorian School Music Festival – Melbourne
The Playford International College Wind Ensemble again participated in the Victorian School Music Festival held in Melbourne in Week 2 of this term. The VSMF invites schools from around Australia and overseas to participate and perform in a number of outstanding concert venues in Victoria.
This year the Wind Ensemble performed in the Intermediate section, a higher division than last year. The ensemble performed repertoire of a higher standard and performed for an increased time of 12 minutes.
Our Wind Ensemble, consisting of 22 students from year 8 – 12 and accompanied by Mrs Trenbirth and Mr Trotter flew over to Melbourne on Tuesday 1st August to begin our exciting adventure. We again stayed at the Hotel Claremont Guesthouse on Toorak Road in South Yarra which is situated about 3kms from the City.
After settling in to our accommodation we went for a relaxing walk up Chapel Street to the Prahran Markets for some lunch and then checking out the sights around South Yarra. Dinner was at Brother Burger, dishing up some delicious burgers, wings and fries!
Our Performance on the Wednesday was held at the Hawthorn Arts Centre. The Music Festival is set up with 3 activities for all to be involved in: Performance, Education – on-stage tutorial with the Chief Adjudicator & Listening to the other ensembles performing in the session. Our performance program consisted of 4 songs in different styles: ‘Crown of Castile’’ our march, ‘Implacato’ our set piece, ‘What a Wonderful World’ our ballad, and finished with a calypso-flavoured hit song ‘Jump in the Line’.
Our overall performance gained a bronze which is pleasing for our students, considering the young ensemble and over half the students performed on their 2nd instrument. Feedback from the adjudicators was pleasing and certainly gave us some positive aspects of our performance and areas that we can work on to further improve as an ensemble, with a huge focus on listening to each other and working more on balance within the ensemble and working as a team. We received an ‘outstanding’ mention for our overall presentation and ‘excellence’ for our rhythmical accuracy. We were commended on our program displaying variety of repertoire in our performance.
Well done to all the students in the Wind Ensemble. I have really enjoyed working on this repertoire with you and thank you for your time and effort in preparing for Melbourne, including holiday and extended rehearsals.
I would also like to thank Mr Trotter for accompanying us to Melbourne and experiencing the Music Festival for the first time. Your support was truly fantastic and I really appreciate you stepping in at the last minute to attend. I would also like to give a huge thanks to Marion Furber, Judi Warrick & Janice Leahy for the huge amount of help, immaculate planning and support in the lead up to the Melbourne trip, these events don’t just happen without all the hard work from the many people behind the scenes and to drop things to get uniforms sorted or payments made, I am truly grateful for your support. Congratulations to the Wind Ensemble.
Nicole Trenbirth – Wind Ensemble Director
