Volume 30 Issue 18 18 Jun 2021 8 Tammuz 5781

Music Matters

Diana Springford – Head of Music

Last week, we had the wonderful opportunity to bring together 157 student musicians from Years 4 to 12 across 20 music ensembles for our annual Music Camp. For the first time, we were joined by a group of 16 students from Mount Sinai College and their teachers, Mrs Shatari and Ms Rubinstein. These students and 28 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 on Thursday evening.

Our guest artist for camp was Alice Chance, a wonderful composer and choral conductor and lovely person.

Throughout Term 2, Alice has been working with a number of student volunteers to compose two very different works for us for our Capital Appeal. The first work is a multipart work for choir, called Ha’Shorashim. Over a number of meetings, a group of senior High School students shared their thoughts, feelings and images of Emanuel School, also contributing some specific lyrics in English and Hebrew, that, with some very poetic advice about the Hebrew from Morah Ruth Harvey, have emerged within Alice’s composition as a very beautiful and authentic expression of our School.

Another group of students from Years 5 through to Year 12, met with Alice over a number of other occasions, and contributed questions, values, and audio files for the finale of the Music Camp concert – Mak’he’lat Kehila. Mak’he’lat Kehila is a very different song, where audience members are required to scan a QR code to take them to a survey that, in turn and depending upon their answers, leads them to an Emanuel value (for example, ruach or Yachad ve Yadid) which in turn lets them access to a unique sound file made up of the recordings from Emanuel School life. These recordings were of a huge number of things, activities and environments, such as the birds in the morning on the Waxman Drive, the sound of a futsal game, sounds of liquid bubbling over a Bunsen burner, and so on. These sounds together produce a shimmering “Emanuel School” soundscape over which the audience and campers sang, as they learned it, a simple and beautiful two-part song. This too was a unique and special kind of School song!

At camp, Alice conducted these two songs, she worked with the Senior Choir and Junior Choir on two of her very special compositions, she took a bunch of volunteers on an early morning sound walk along the lakeside, and she worked with some Year 12 composition students. 

Our student MCs at the Concert gave us insights into their favourite moments from Camp. The Talent Show as always was a highlight, as well as the scenic bushland and coastal setting at Lake Mac, the good food, and the extensive facilities for table tennis, soccer and other games during breaks in rehearsals.  

I would like to thank the brilliant music team for their care, energy, expertise and inspiration during camp, including Mr Burley, Mr Majsay, Mr Owen, Mrs Spira and Mrs Shatari, and our outstanding music tutors, conductors and accompanists. Thank you to Mrs De Araujo for her tremendous behind-the-scenes event organisation. Thanks to the wonderful camp welfare team including Mr Ezekiel, Ms Woolf, Mr Messiah, Morah Martine, Morah Bar-On, Morah Ruthie, and Mr Lukins for their energy, care and time. We are very grateful to our Year 10 Food Technology students under the supervision of Mrs Starkey who volunteered to cook and serve the BBQ (Ava Rose, Liam Budai, Ethan Zines, Daniel Langman, Tali Yedid, Ben Rosenfeld with additional assistance from Madison Starkey). We also thank the marketing, IT, maintenance and security teams for their help with concert logistics and Mrs Lipson for reproducing our repertoire and program.  

 

Our stunning photographs of the concert are courtesy of  Ofer Levy, a member of our parent community, who has been so generous in regularly volunteering to attend school concerts to capture such superb images of our performers.  

We would like to thank the many Emanuel parents who support the Music program and who were such an appreciative audience. Kol Hakavod to all the music campers who worked very hard for long hours with great enthusiasm and focus and achieved really wonderful progress as musicians and stunning performances in the final concert. They should be very proud of themselves!

Private Music Tuition and Infant Strings Program

Thank you to those who have already advised us of changes to private tuition and ISP enrolments for next term. The deadline for new enrolments, notification of changes or intention to discontinue for Term 3, has now passed. All students currently receiving private tuition and members of the K-2 Infant Strings Program will be automatically re-enrolled into tutor schedules for Term 3 along with students commencing lessons for the first time, committed to the full term of lessons and liable for fees.  Please contact Matilda Grieve if you have any questions.  

The schedules for Term 3, 2021 will be created at the end of term and emailed by early July.

On the Music Portal Page, you will announcements and information about:

  •   Private Music Tuition (beginning and discontinuing)
  •   Ensemble and Choir membership for K-12 students
  •   Infant Strings Program (ISP) for K-2
  •   Performance opportunities
  •   Borrowing an orchestral instrument

 You can also find fun news and updates from us on Instagram.