Diana Springford – Acting Head of Performance and Curriculum K-6

Music camp

In the last week of Term 2, we had the wonderful opportunity to bring together 116 of our student musicians in Years 4-12 across 16 music ensembles for our annual Music camp. These students and 29 staff worked tirelessly over the four days of camp to learn a huge range of repertoire and refine a number of items for performance at the Music Camp Showcase Concert in the Lehrer Family Building (MPH).

We were very fortunate to have highly-regarded choir conductor Kelly Shepard and one of Australia’s most respected band conductors, Luke Gilmour, join us at the camp to work with all of our musicians, inspiring and guiding students and staff towards further improvements to our wonderful ensembles. The range of repertoire performed at the concert, including some beautiful Jewish choral pieces, was voted our best ever by some of the audience!

Our student MCs at the concert gave us an insight into their favourite moments from camp. The Talent Show was clearly a highlight and we also heard about the amazing views at Merroo and the extensive facilities for table tennis, soccer and other games during breaks in rehearsals. Thank you to Maya Zyl, Oren Levin-Kahn and Joel Allen, our Year 6 Music Leaders plus Joshua Amoils and Gabriel Sebban in Year 12 for acting as MCs as well as Kyah Laishevsky and Zach Nabarro in Year 9 for helping with lighting and sound, and Aron Jaffe who helped with stage management.

Thank you to our music team (Daniel Burley, Alex Hone and Elizabeth Birrell) as well as Jo De Araujo for her tremendous behind-the-scenes event organisation. Thanks also to the camp welfare team (Garry Case, Erika Ktalav, Lauren Butler, Gabrielle Wynhausen and Meghan Carroll) and the army of outstanding music tutors and accompanists that are so crucial to our program.  

We are very grateful to our Year 11 Hospitality students under the supervision of Lara Ephron who volunteered to cook and serve the BBQ (Hannah Adler, Michael Khedoori, Victoria Kreiman, Angel Mitrani, Emma Orrock-Schwartz, Chelsea Rutstein, Jordan Weizman and Zara Weizman). Their efficiency in tackling this task is much appreciated. We also thank the marketing, maintenance and security teams for their help with concert logistics and Esti Lipson and Deborah Beder for reproducing our repertoire. 

Our stunning photographs of the concert are courtesy of Ofer Levy, who so generously spent the concert working to capture such superb images while simultaneously enjoying the performance in a parental capacity.  We are indebted to Eytan Messiah for helping us by designing our T-shirt this year.   

Thank you to the many Emanuel parents who support the music program and who have written to express their appreciation of the showcase concert and to pass on such positive feedback about Music camp. This annual event is a massive undertaking for students and staff; one that draws on the support of the whole school. We feel very gratified by your kind words.