As we approach Week 7, there is a lot is going on around the School. Next week the Year 11 students will be completing their examinations and Year 10 will be leaving for Zionist camp on Tuesday. Last week a few students went on HICES music camp – Aron Jaffe from Year 10 wrote us a summary of his experience.

HICES Music Camp

From 14 to 17 August, six Emanuel students – Amber Langman (Year 8), Talia Blackman (Year 8), Rebekah Goldsworthy (Year 8), Nathaniel Spielman (Year 8), Matthew Doust (Year 10) and I, participated in the HICES Music Festival after a successful audition. Accompanied by Mr Burley, we were able to make it to ‘The Tops’ safely and in high spirits for the coming camp. 

Our days were full-on. Despite arriving at around 5:00pm we still ended up doing two hours of rehearsing on the first night. I was falling asleep as I was playing! Our schedules briefly went like this: breakfast, rehearsal, rehearsal, lunch, rehearsal, rehearsal, dinner and then some sort of evening activity. These evening activities ranged from an amazing talent show to an incredibly challenging trivia contest. The entire time we were all exhausted, mostly due to the limited sleep (usually five hours) and our rigorous rehearsal schedule. From my view, the pieces that we played weren’t excessively challenging, but the camp enabled me to develop the ‘quality of my sound’ and resist dropping off note lengths. The food at camp was consistently delicious and never seemed to disappoint me. 

My favourite part about HICES is being able to have the experience of performing with people outside of Sydney, for example, there were six trumpeters and each one of them was from at least four or five hours outside of Sydney. This idea of mingling with people outside of our suburbs helped me get an understanding of what life without a city is like. One of the trumpeters next to me lives in Orange. I don’t know how we came to it but we ended up discussing property sizes. So whilst he was talking about how small his land was and I was saying that I think that I have a decent sized house, he eventually said that his land was only 11 acres, compared to mine which is significantly smaller. Overall the whole experience was fun and enriching. I recommend this camp to any musicians looking to further excel at their discipline. 

Aron Jaffe

Birthdays

Happy birthday to the following students who celebrated their birthdays this week or this weekend!

Eden Sadra (Year 9)

Lauren Sussman (Year 11)

Timothy Steiner (Year 12)

Olyvea Akres (Year 9)

Noa Blair (Year 10)

Have a great week!

Lara Joffe, Sienna Amoils and Josh Amoils