Talented Artist and Musician

Emily Calder with her daughter Ellianna

Emily Calder is a versatile artist and musician. Since the age of four, she has been working her way down through the string section of the orchestra. Emily began exploring violin via the Suzuki Method. Her first teacher was former Bathurst resident, Janice Donaldson.

At the age of thirteen, she began lessons with Mitchell Conservatorium's Nicholas Newell, who introduced her to the viola when she was fifteen.

She is currently studying cello with Mitchell Conservatorium's Sybbi Georgiou.

Emily has the University of Queensland's Diploma of Music Teaching, which is a tertiary accreditation for teaching instrumental music, and is currently working towards the Bachelor of Music degree, awarded by the University of New England.

Emily enjoys many different styles of music, and is as happy playing gypsy violin as she is in performing the great classical violin repertoire.

At Mitchell Conservatorium Emily teaches violin and also directs two string ensembles for primary school students.

Mitchell Young Strings

On Wednesday afternoon, she enjoys teaching Mitchell Young Strings to play various stringed instruments. On Thursday, she leads Fiddlesticks, which is a NSW government assisted ensemble for students from Department of Education primary schools. Thanks to their support, lessons only cost $2 per session.

She teaches the students in these two groups the basics of playing an instrument in the violin family in an ensemble, and also uses her knowledge of conducting to show them the ropes in that area also. Emily enjoyed being part of Jerry Nowak's conducting classes when the world-renowned director and musical arranger visited Australia last year.

Pastel by Emily Calder

Emily is also a visual artist. She favours working with pastels, which she finds challenging and rewarding.

You can hear Emily playing Summer, from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and a movement from Mozart's Violin Cocnerto No 5 in A Major in a free concert on Sunday, 20th May at 4 PM in The Orchard Room at Mitchell Conservatorium, West Wing, Bathurst Court House in Russell St. Emily will be accompanied by pianist, David McKay. Her brother, Jared Killey will perform some beautiful classical guitar music.

Countdown

Simon Tedeschi

Our new Armchair Concert radio program begins on Monday, 5th March at 1.30 PM and will feature Simon Tedeschi, Bathurst Chamber Orchestra and Guitar Trek, performing music by Mozart, Gershwin, Australian composers and a few surprises.

You can listen on 92.3 or 94.7 FM, at 2MCE.org or with the smartphone tunein app.

We are playing music by Simon Tedeschi and our own local orchestra, because we want to let you know about the great concert at 7.30 PM in Lithgow on Friday 16th March and Bathurst on Saturday, 16th March, and at 2 PM in Forbes, on Sunday 18th March.

Tickets are only $20 for adults ($15 concession) and free for all school-aged children!

Later Armchair Concerts will feature the best of Mitchell Conservatorium concerts over the past few years, including piano duets from Max and Hayden Reeder, flute and piano music featuring Phil Braithwaite, Prem Love and Cindy Fox, and performances from our Rising Stars concerts.

Christine Sweeney and David McKay are looking forward to showcasing our talented musicians every fortnight from Monday, 5th March at 1.30 PM

Mitchell Con Puts Students in Hospital

Anthony Tran

Mitchell Conservatorium is still putting students in hospital. But we're not making them sick, or injuring them. We are giving them performance opportunities, through Christine McMillan, Arts Coordinator at Bathurst Base Hospital.

On Wednesday, 23rd November, 2011 Belinda Macri and Anthony Tran played some piano pieces at Bathurst Base Hospital. Their piano teacher, David McKay, also played a few tunes.

Belinda Macri, David McKay and Anthony Tran

Australian Music was a special feature of our short concert, which included pieces by Ross Edwards, Elissa Milne, Sonny Chua and the first Bathurst performance of two pieces from Justin McKay's Lewis Carroll Suite.

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.

U3A?

Cheryl McKellar and David McKay, with Joan and Bill Bergen in the corner

U3A, or University of the Third Age, is an organisation for people over fifty, no longer working full time. The Bathurst branch is very popular and always has lots of different programs to appeal to a wide range of interests.

The Music Appreciation program has been going for over ten years. It is currently run at the beginning of the fourth school term. Each week we listen to some live music, hear some fascinating information about an aspect of Music, and also listen to some recordings to complement the talk and live music.

Over the past eight years we have explored

J S Bach
Mozart
Chopin, Schumann and Mendelssohn (all born within a year of one another)
the beginnings of Russian classical Music
British Music of the Twentieth Century
G F Handel
Australian Classical Music
French Music

Proposed future topics include:

Haydn
Beethoven
Bach's sons

Music Is For Life

For the past six weeks, Mitchell Conservatorium has been hosting a Music Appreciation program for Bathurst's University of the Third Age. Each year in Term 4, David McKay presents a one hour program which includes interesting top-quality performances and recordings of music on a selected theme. This year we have been focussing on French Music from the past two hundred years.

Performers have included Julia Romano, who sang French chansons by Debussy and Fauré, Glen Wholohan, who played movements from an enjoyable, jazzy saxophone suite by Jean Françaix, Chloe Walker, who played an arrangement of Debussy's first Arabesque for flute and piano, and Joan and David McKay, who played Fauré's beloved Dolly suite for piano duet.

For the final week's program, Cheryl McKellar played Tango en Skai by Roland Dyens, which you can hear played by the composer himself in the video at the head of this post.

Mitchell Conservatorium's first director, Laurie Orchard, inaugurated the Bathurst Music Appreciation program in the 1990s. David McKay is humbled and honoured to be following in his distinguished footsteps. (Laurie, an octogenarian, is still hosting a U3A Music Appreciation program in Lismore, where he now lives.)