Through Evans' Eyes

Marcus Milton, Beatrice and Adelaide Kenworthy with Will Schoenmaker

Nine year old Mitchell Conservatorium student, Will Schoenmaker was the joint winner of the Arts Alive 2795 Children's Writing Prize for 2010. He wrote a great story called Through Evans' Eyes in which Governor Macquarie's surveyor looks at Bathurst  in 2010.

In Will's story, the Conservatorium even gets a mention, as you will see when you read this extract from his story:

Hello everyone. My name is George William Evans. My statue was erected in King's Parade in 1913 and now I can see all around the area and watch how Bathurst has changed since I was alive.

I can hear laughter from the children coming out of Annie's Ice Cream Parlour, their faces covered in ice cream and fudge dripping down their arms.

Last year I watched as the builders completed the new bell tower at All Saints' Cathedral. It was exciting to hear the bells ring for the first time for the new Catholic Bishop of Bathurst, bishop Michael McKenna, the eleventh Bishop of Bathurst.

Every afternoon I see the children going into the Mitchell Conservatorium for their music lessons. Each Tuesday I see one boy called Will Schoenmaker as he goes to his piano lessons. He is getting better. I can hear him play Alouette and The Quarrel.

I can also see the Western Advocate building where each night journalists write the stories and the editors produce the newspaper. Early in the morning the newspapers are delivered to the people of Bathurst and the businesses I can see up and down George St ...

At Christmas time I hear the sounds of Christmas carols coming from Machattie Park. The children are excited waiting for Santa to arrive. Maybe this year Santa will leave a present for me at the base of my statue.

But I already have a great gift - I have the perfect place to watch life in Bathurst go by.

What a great story! You can read the whole thing in the Western Times 16th December, 2010 issue. And you can hear Will playing in a recent student concert here.

Mitchell Con students head off to hospital

Performing at Bathurst Base Hospital is challenging and rewarding. You have to forget about having a stationary audience, and pretend you are making a radio program, realising that people are going to be making noises and walking across the stage area while you play.

Zoe Rodwell, Arts Coordinator, assures us that the music is greatly appreciated and can be heard all over the hospital.

With this in mind, Felicity and Cheryl McKellar played some beautiful music on flute and piccolo (Felicity) and classical guitar (Cheryl), which included a suite of pieces by Pujol describing Buenos Aires and the terrific Christmas song, Carol of the Bells.



Stephen Aveling-Rowe played Burgmuller's Gewitter and Tansman's Le Petit Oiseau on a digital keyboard and later played some cello pieces, accompanied by his mother Merilyn. Unfortunately the memory card on the digital camera filled up before he played a beautiful rendition of Saint-Saëns Le Cygne, but we did manage to capture some of Let Me Call You Sweetheart. We apologise for the sudden early ending and for all the hospital goings on during the performances we have put up here.

The man who plays the instrument made the instrument

What a lot of fun! How many of the songs do you recognise?
(Spoiler alert: Snubby J reveals the pieces played if you click on the description box.)

He says he made the instrument with Dad's help during the long summer break.

Onya Snubby!

Our talented students

At last we have some of our own music to share! Come on over to TheMitchellCon Youtube site and enjoy some great piano, trumpet, classical guitar and flute choir music from an end of year student concert and our annual Scholarship concert.

More to come!

You will also find links to sites that Youtube sites hosted by our staff and students.

Magic!

Eusebius requests your indulgence, please. Normal service will be resumed soon, but today he is reminscing. Today is our first baby's birthday. Daniel is 36 today and is busy rehearsing for a new duo guitar recording with Anthony Field, to be distributed by MOVE Records. It will include music by Phillip Houghton and Nigel Westlake, two great Australian composers for classical guitar.

But I'm remembering him as a little boy doing the percussion for our $1.99 Music For Pleasure Greatest Hits of The Tijuana Brass record.

He used to love the first track, The Magic Trumpet, which begins with a rhythmic motif for 2 trumpets, and is answered by the bass drum's BOOM, BOOM.

Today I discovered that the song was composed by Bert Kaempfert, who was born on my birthday and died on my Nanna's birthday. I used to love to listen to Bert Kaempfert's A Swingin' Safari when I visited my Uncle, Aunt and cousins. We thought Uncle Ben was a cool dude, with a great-sounding stereo and such a wonderful brassy, bassy record to play us.

If you'd like to make some great sounds on a trumpet, guitar or almost any other instrument (no vuvuzela lessons currently, though), you can enrol now to start your journey in music-making next year at Mitchell Conservatorium, which is located in the West Wing of Bathurst's Courthouse in Russell St. Phone 6331 6622 for more information.

Mitchell Con Youtube site is live

Belinda Macri performed this piano piece on Sunday, 5th December, 2010 at a Mitchell Con end of year student concert.

Do you like the Mixolydian flavour at the beginning?

The piece is called Larrikin and it is by Elissa Milne, one of Australia's best-known and best-loved composers of pieces for students. We hope you enjoy our very first video, and look forward to sharing lots more with you in 2011.
I'm sorry that the video is only taking up a small part of the screen. But I don't think it is distorting our performer by making her look stretched out or elongated.


Our second video features, Will Schoenmaker, playing at the same student concert.

Do you have a video of your performance?

Mitchell Conservatorium now has its own Youtube channel. We would love to feature good quality recordings of excellent performances of Mitchell Conservatorium students on our channel.

And I would love to use your videos on this blog.

The video above features Stephen Aveling-Rowe playing Bach's Toccata in D Minor on the Opera House pipe organ. Stephen learns cello from David Pereira and piano from David McKay. We can't claim credit for his great organ playing, but we can chuckle that his organ teacher is also a David: David Clark from Cooranbong.