Music and Art at Mitchell Con

Georg Mertens by Jennifer DeMaere

Mitchell Conservatorium has so many talented people working together producing great things. But we didn't know till very recently that we have a talented visual artist on our staff.

 Jennifer DeMaere has been a valued member of the administration staff of the Con for many years. Her painting of Georg Mertens captures him perfectly.

Georg teaches cello and guitar at Mitchell Con and at home in Katoomba, but is also renowned for the beauty of his musical performances in Jenolan Caves. These have been sensitively recorded and uploaded to Youtube, where his performances have been viewed more than a million times.

I enjoy his performances of J S Bach cello suite movements, and appreciate the trouble he goes to in the interesting annotations he includes with these performances. But I've only discovered this morning that one of the performances of his own compositions has been cleverly juxtaposed with stunning pictures of the cave interiors. Georg's own Ciaconna is enhanced by the scenes included in this video:

 

 You can hear Georg performing with his student, Tim Burrey at 3 PM on Sunday,5th August at Mitchell Conservatorium. Aaron Hopper and Fretworx will also be entertaining the audience with some great guitar sounds.

 All proceeds from your $ note donation will go to Central West Care For more information, please ring Mitchell Conservatorium on 6331 6622 during office hours.

Sounded Beautiful in Bathurst, and will be Outstanding in Orange and Delightful in Dubbo

A poignant moment from Tchaikovsky's wonderful Souvenir de Florence to be performed by Ensemble Six  on Saturday 21st July, at Orange Regional Conservatorium in Hill St at 7.30 PM and in the Macquarie Conservatorium concert hall in Bultje St, Dubbo on Sunday, 22nd July at 3 PM.


Tchaikovsky wrote such a lot of great music, but was often plagued by self-doubt while composing them. That's how he felt while writing this piece, yet it has become one of his most popular works. He found it challenging writing for six string players, instead of the usual four, and decided to write the work as if it were for an orchestra, but only score it for six players. He later rescored it for string orchestra, and a friend also wrote an arrangement for piano duet.


Ensemble Six is a group of Central West musicians, consisting of Doreen Cumming and Alina Zborowski, violins, Nicholas Newell and Fiona Thompson, violas, and Claudia Douglas and Katherine Moses, cellos.


The performance on Saturday 14th July at Mitchell Conservatorium in Bathurst was superb. Most of the performers have some solo parts to play, which showcase their musicality beautifully.


For more information, please ring Mitchell Conservatorium 0n 6331 6622 during office hours.

New director for Lachlan

Andrew Baker, B Mus (hons), L Mus A, A Mus A

Fiona Thompson, Executive Director of Mitchell Conservatorium, has announced the appointment of the new Director for the Lachlan Division:

I am delighted to announce that Andrew Baker will be the new Director of the Lachlan Division of Mitchell Conservatorium from the beginning of Term 3, 2012. Andrew Baker has demonstrated that he is well suited to this position; he has extensive experience in managing staff, students and events through his work at Orange Regional Conservatorium and has developed a high profile as a successful music educator, string teacher and performer throughout the Central West over the past 7 years. Andrew will retain a casual professional association with the ORC in the short term.

Andrew Baker began learning the violin at the age of 8 at his school, Barker College, where he ultimately became the school’s first captain of music. He studied violin performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Alex Todicescu and later in The Netherlands with Berent Korfker and Florian Donderer. Since 2005, Andrew has held the position of Assistant Director, Artistic Programs Coordinator and Head of Strings at Orange Regional Conservatorium in NSW where he has taught violin, string ensembles and school string programs, coordinated tuition and performance programs, and performed in around 20 concerts per year.
 Andrew is currently a Master of Philosophy candidate (String Pedagogy) at the Australian National University. He has presented his research through Violin Pedagogy Australia, The Australian String Teachers Association and The Music Teachers Association, and in December 2012 will present his research findings at the annual conference of the Musicological Society of Australia. Andrew and his wife, Helen, moved to the central west in 2005 to engage in the exciting music teaching and performing opportunities offered by the region. Now raising two young children, they are well embedded in the community and are proud to call themselves ‘locals.’ Andrew says

I take up the position of Lachlan Director, Mitchell Conservatorium, with great excitement. I look forward to working with the Conservatorium's professional staff to develop and maintain community-focused music education programs and resources in the Forbes and Parkes regions of NSW. I am especially committed to creating engaging music-making opportunities across the Lachlan Division’s communities.

The man, the land, the book and the song

The only known likeness of Pemulwuy, c.1801

It all started when my friend Louise mentioned that she had been on a chilly walk to the Pemulwuy shops today. The name sounded familiar, but it was a name and nothing more.

When I went to Belmont Public School in the 1950s and 60s, we did hear about Bennelong and we learnt about the local Awabakal tribe, but that was about it.

I'm guessing that the children of the 21st century would know that Pemulwuy was The Rainbow Warrior, a brave man who didn't take the arrival of the European boat people lying down.

If they were at all curious, they would also discover so easily that because the city of Sydney is built on his land, his name has been given to a Sydney suburb near Greystanes, and that he is the subject of a stirring novel by Eric Willmot, which inspired Paul Jarman's moving choral piece.

The linked articles from The Australian Dictionary of Biography are fascinating, as is the current Pemulwuy entry in Wikipedia. Matilda Media and See Pictures intend to produce a feature film, telling the story of Pemulwuy's battle for his people.

If you would like to read about Jarman's song, please scroll down this link to an article the composer has written about two of his compositions. The article gives musical examples, the story of the work's creation and also the lyrics which you might like to read through as you listen to this thrilling performance of the song by 500 male voices in the Voices of Birralee concert finale in the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in  2011.

Is Bigger Better, Part Three?

In the old joke, the piccolo player's name is Lester. Lester Bring.

I suppose the pipe organist has even less to bring, but she certainly plays the largest instrument.

But is bigger better?

Pipe organs may also be the most expensive instruments, because some of them cost millions of dollars. And then there's the upkeep.

I have attended pipe organ concerts in Newcastle, Sydney and Bathurst where very few others joined me. I even went to Simon Preston's concert in Sydney entirely on my own, because I couldn't talk anyone else into tagging along.

They are linked so inextricably with churches, it is hard to think of them without religious overtones.

Though we once noticed that a young lad from western Queensland had a different point of view: We were attending a convocation service for Kenmore Christian College, the former Queensland Churches of Christ college, in the Ann St, Brisbane, Presbyterian Church. Many of our students did not regularly attend churches with pipe organs. 

As the organist played before the service, I was thinking pious thoughts ... or trying to. But a young lad suddenly exclaimed, quite loudly: Oo, this sounds like Boris Karlov's coming! I was thinking of heaven, but Robert was imagining a horror movie.

Cameron Carpenter would like us to enjoy the music of the pipe organ on its own terms, and not confine it to the four walls of a church. His brilliant performances show that it is a marvellously flexible instrument and can be used to make a sensuous recreation of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune  just as well as it can be employed playing Bach, or even Rufus Wainwright.


Check out Cameron's terrific version of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride. 

Is Bigger Better, Part Two?

In today's Sydney Morning Herald, Peter McCallum reviews  Erich Korngold's Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) and points out that it calls for such a large orchestra, they couldn't fit in the pit and so are heard via an audio link from the Sydney Opera House's recording studio.

Was it worth separating the instrumentalists from the singers on stage? Is a bigger opera orchestra better?

McCallum says that with triple wind parts, 40 string players, 2 harps, piano, organ and extensive percussion, it is obvious why they had to be separated! He reports that it was a "worthwhile, technically well-managed experiment." He says that the balance between the singers and the orchestra was not as good as the cinema sound in the Met HD broadcasts, but had ample warmth and colour.

But he felt that the experience of hearing a heldentenor soaring above a large orchestra was lost by the separation of the musicians. And he also mused what it would be like to be with the instrumentalists in the studio, with video of the singers beamed in.

The video extract below is the opening of a 1983 German TV production.

Upsizing: is bigger better?

We've been warned of the dangers of succumbing to those bigger meals that the fast food outlets entice us with: and I'm living proof that it's not a good idea!

What about music? Is bigger better? If a string quartet of 2 violins, 1 viola and a cello sounds wonderful, will a sextet with an extra viola and cello turn wonderful into absolutely fabulous?

Fiona Thompson, of Ensemble Six

Here is a great opportunity to find out, when Mitchell Conservatorium director, Fiona Thompson combines her viola with central west musicians Nicholas Newell (viola), Catherine Moses (cello), Doreen Cummings (violin), Alina Zborowski (violin) and Ella Jamieson (cello).

Here's a taste of one of the works they may be playing. I'm guessing that Souvenir de Florence is one of the pieces in the concert, because the promo material says they will be playing Tchaikovsky and this is his most popular work for sextet.

This video features the Tokyo String Quartet, upsized by Born Lau (viola) and Arlen Hlusko (cello).





Is bigger better? You can find out for yourself by attending one of these performances:

Concert dates: 14 July Saturday 7.30pm Orchard Room, Mitchell Conservatorium, Bathurst. 15 July Sunday 3.00pm Parkes Services Club, Parkes. 21 July Sat 7.30pm ORC Auditorium, Orange. 22 July Sunday 3.00pm Macquarie Conservatorium, Dubbo.

Tickets: Adults $20, concession $15 & school age children free. For all booking information and further details  see here or call (02) 6331 6622.