Minus Two?

Conagh McMahon-Hogan with Michelle Griffin

Conagh McMahon-Hogan is a talented Mitchell Conservatorium scholarship holder, who studies Voice with Marisa Mariani-Starr and Piano with David McKay. He is pictured here singing Non Siate Ristrosi, from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

Conagh is St Stanislaus' College's Senior Songman of the Year and also Head Boy. He has enjoyed performing in local musical productions, including taking the roles of Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance, Mr Bumble in Oliver and Leo Bloom in The Producers.

He also enjoys working with his friends Ryan Sanders and Senio Toleafoa in Minus One. Their latest recording is their version of the Mumford and Sons song White Blank Pages.

Multi-instrumentalist, Elné le Roux

Elné le Roux, Scholarship concert, 2011

On Saturday, 2nd April this year, Mitchell Conservatorium scholarship holders presented two concerts to showcase their talents. One of these performers was Elné le Roux, pictured here playing Australian composer, Andy Firth's Big Belly Blues with accompanist Michelle Griffin.

Born in South Africa, Elné began playing the euphonium when her family moved to Queensland. She later took up the flute and saxophone and enjoys playing these in a variety of ensembles in Bathurst, including the Mitchell Conservatorium Senior Flute Choir and Bathurst RSL Band.

Take Five is one of the most iconic alto saxophone solos. Here performed by Dave Brubeck's band, and featuring Paul Desmond, the composer of the piece, on alto saxophone.

We Love Jane Rutter

Happy flutists: Felicity McKellar with Jane Rutter

Mitchell Conservatorium recently hosted a visit of Australia's famous flutist, Jane Rutter to Bathurst, Lithgow and surrounding towns. Jane is a great model for students to follow. She makes her performances so enjoyable with her amazing technical ability and sensitivity and in the way she always engages with her audience.

Students loved the way she led the flute workshops and also enjoyed being acknowledged in her concerts.

An audience member at Lithgow was greatly moved and uplifted when she attended the concert in the church, which had been the venue for her sister's funeral the day before.

Awesome String Orchestra Day

And here is one of Mozart's great pieces of music for orchestra:

Free sheet music

Stephen Watson, conducting his prize-winning entry in the composition competition

Does it surprise you to learn that our most popular post so far was the one about free sheet music? In that post, we told readers about the terrific Petrucci Music Library, which now contains 94,000 scores of music for orchestra, violin, piano, chamber ensemble, guitar and almost any instrument you could imagine.

If you are interested in playing music that is over 70 years old, this is a great site for you.

We also gave a link to a site where arranger, Richard Harris, has generously hosted oodles of pages of free copies of his arrangements of film music, popular classics, Christmas music and more.

If there is so much sheet music available free of charge (not forgetting the many illegal download sites), why would anyone visit a music store, whether physical or online, and pay for the stuff?

One good reason is that music stores sell books. Remember them? One great thing about a music book is that it probably contains music you weren't looking for, but which may be a great complement to the music you wanted.

For example, if your music teacher tells you to get a copy of Scarlatti's Sonata in C Major, L 252, you could download one from here. You'd get a readable copy and you'd have it almost instantly.

But if you decided to buy this book which contains that sonata, you'd get a modern edition, with fingering, information about the meaning of the signs on the music, advice on how to play the trills and ornaments, an introduction about Scarlatti, an article on how to paly ihs style of music and 13 other sonatas to have a play through.

You can't beat the price of a free download, but a book gives you a lot extra for only a few dollars.

Music for your Chamber

Fancy a spot of chamber music?

This is music written for small groups of players, where there is only one instrument per part. (A chamber orchestra, such as The Bathurst Chamber Orchestra is a much smaller orchestra than the Sydney Symphony, and may have only two instruments playing each line of music.)

A good place to start is with Schubert, one of the most amazing composers in music history. He composed an enormous amount of music in his short life of 31 years, including symphonies, operas, over six hundred songs, and quite a bit of chamber music.

Let's begin with his terrific song, The Trout, here sung by Ian Bostridge.



Schubert wrote an interesting set of variations on this tune in the fourth movement of his very popular Trout Quintet.



This piece of music was written for an unusual combination of
Piano
Violin
Viola
Cello
and
Double Bass.

(It is unusual because double basses do not usually feature in small string ensembles (though they are used in chamber orchestras).

The string quartet usually consists of two violins, a viola, and a cello as seen in this article and photo of Bella Forte, a group of four Mitchell Conservatorium students who play for weddings, parties, anything.

We'll finish this introduction to chamber music with the beautiful Nocturne movement from Borodin's Second String Quartet, performed by the distinguished Jerusalem Quartet.

Beautiful solo flute performance

Here is a great solo flute performance by Jane Rutter, to be heard in Bathurst on Friday, 3rd June at All Saints Cathedral