Campers' Little Helpers

A casual visitor to National Music Camp could be forgiven for thinking they had landed in a nest of recovering hedonists. The phrase ‘AAs’ rings out with regularity, generally in a tone of great admiration.

The AAs are in fact the tireless participants in the Arts Administration stream at NMC. They are the schedule-toting, phone-wielding army of efficiency who seem to know everything that is going on at NMC – anywhere, anytime. Need to find a tutorial room? Ask an AA. Trying to track down an elusive interview subject? Ask an AA. Music has magically appeared on a perfectly set stage before rehearsal? Thank an AA. Enjoying a full Sunday off? Then spare a thought for the tireless AAs.

Instead, they will be walking many kilometres a day between St Marks College and the Elder Conservatorium, not to mention around campus. They are more closely chained to a rigid timetable than almost anyone at camp. They work 16 hour days, if not more, and are the first participants up in the morning and the last to go to bed. On Saturday afternoon and evening, they will move three orchestras worth of chairs and stands. Twice. Then they will round up a raft of music and ‘bump out’ (the technical term for packing up).

Concert nights are where the AAs finally get to appear in public, albeit performing only a fraction of their duties. So please give a huge round of applause to the black-clad, super-efficient ghostly forms onstage in the interval and between pieces. They are the people who help to keep NMC running for the rest of us!

 

Anna Doukakis

Words About Music Participant

 

Ahh, the memories

The first Friday of camp is officially 'T-shirt Day'. It's a bonding leveller of an exercise in which fashion comes second to the experience of finally being utterly confident of exactly who IS, and who IS NOT, a camper! This year's t-shirt design was suggested by an artful trumpeter at an earlier AYO program in 2010.

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For the staff, donning camp 'uniform' prompted some reminiscences of days of old. Kirsty McCahon, double bass tutor, was reminded of her own NMC days when T-shirt Day gave students a means of personal expression. 'I can't remember a single student NOT taking up the challenge of creating their own individual t-shirt - ripping off sleeves, altering necklines.' 

Cello tutor Louise King recalls a camp (albeit in England) when her section earned kudos from fellow campers by wearing their pyjamas all day. 'I think we really earned their respect!' Perhaps that’s a challenge to our current crop of campers to come up with their own alternative uniform for a day?

Over its 63-year history, camp has certainly evolved. [You can read more about this in Anna Doukakis' piece in Musica Fever, due out next week.] From seaside beginnings on the shores of Geelong, to now being hosted in the hallowed halls of Adelaide University, camp and its participants have always reflected a character of their own. 

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NMC campers 1959

We’re looking forward to a fantastic couple of concerts on Saturday. Keep an ear out on ABC Classic FM from 8pm for the life broadcast: SMALLEY Birthday Tango SHOSTAKOVICH Chamber Symphony No.1 (arr. Barshai) STANHOPE Machinations and VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No.6.

And if you’re in Adelaide, there’s another free concert at 4pm featuring TELEMANN Don Quixote Suite STRAUSS Death & Transfiguration and SAINT-SAËNS ‘Organ’ Symphony. Hope to see you there!

by Genevieve Lang, WAM tutor

 

You, me and NMC

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An enthusiastic audience during staff chamber concert

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Outside Elder Hall

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Ping pong at St Marks

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Elder Hall

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On route to rehearsals

With my alarm dragging me into the world of the living this morning, the world of NMC was already in full voice with a trombone giving his or her chops a run for their money with long notes, and across a bed of roses, several forms of open string exercises were being tested by multiple violinists.

Indeed one of the joys of walking around the campus and college is the musical menagerie of sounds drifting down from rehearsals.

On the shuttle bus to Elder Hall and during mealtimes, conversation has been dominated by the floods throughout Queensland. With a large contingent of Queenslanders at NMC, the events are very close to many of our hearts and homes, and our thoughts are with those families affected.

However the program of NMC continues vivace con fuoco.

Having interviewed a broad cross section of the NMC family with fellow ‘WAM-er’ Anna, we have stumbled upon what we believe is the heart of NMC for the majority of the participants: the people. Again and again, from clarinettist to conductor, tutor to trumpeter, the relationships formed are what justify the gruelling two weeks of rehearsals and performances.

Sam Torrens, bass trombone alumni of NMC and now production manager, reflected on his NMC experiences: “the people are great and it’s what seems to bring everybody back… it’s like an addiction.”

Yes, the friendships are sustaining, but the music is what nourishes. It’s the lingua franca  and provides the blank score for meaningful and melodious interactions between all of those involved in NMC.

Oh, and the cricket was cancelled due to inclement weather. I guess we'll have to call it a draw...

 

Lachlan Snow

Words About Music participant

Anna and Lachlan’s radio feature “The National Music Camp Green Room” featuring interviews with several NMC staff and students will go to air during the live broadcast this Saturday beginning at 8pm EST on ABC Classic FM. 

 

All work and much play

As Day Four dawned, the heavy pall of mottled clouds mirrored from above the now keenly-felt weight of Saturday’s pending public performances. Campers quickly dispersed from their breakfast halls at the colleges to commence their pre-rehearsal practising before the oboes’ tuning call-to-arms at 9.30 sharp (although preferably neither sharp nor flat …).

Today was a day of important and very real considerations for both students and staff – ardent ensemble work was broken by not only the all-important mealtimes but also a much-anticipated professional development ‘first’ for NMC. Five brave tutors from across the orchestral spectrum stood before their two hundred-plus expectant charges (and a panel of their esteemed colleagues) and demonstrated their excerpt prowess in a session aimed at illuminating the shadowy and uncertain road of orchestral auditions.

Each presented at their sparkling best and received high commendation from their peers (and more than a few awed murmurings around Elder Hall). We’ll leave them to fight it out over the hypothetical (and perhaps unlikely) appointment …

Yesterday’s free afternoon felt a distant memory as the remainder of the day’s rehearsal time disappeared in a flurry of bows, fingers and pages across the Elder Con while chamber groups digested their parts.  

Playing together was not the privilege of the students alone, however; the staff had their chance to practise what they preach with their own chamber music soiree following dinner. Their performances very much lived up to the verve and spontaneity that these fine artists have spent the week challenging the eager ears of their young audience to expect.

 

Jennifer Mills

Words About Music participant

Community outside rehearsals: The role of cricket at NMC

National Music Camp is about music.  No prizes there unless there is an Order of Australia for Services for Stating the Bleeding Obvious.  But in the small snippets of time between rehearsals, tutorials, more rehearsals and (depending on who you hang around with) 3-8 hours of sleep, there are a few other things that occupy students time.  One of these is cricket.

Cricket is not a matter of life, death or transfiguration (do you hear that Ricky?) but it does however occupy a fairly significant part of camp life.  I went to my first music camp in 2001 and in the 10 years since, it seems that cricket is as much a part of the camp experience now as it was then.  Our Music Director Paul Dean seems almost as excited about the prospect of unleashing his pull shot on Thursday night (dream on Paul, you can’t pull past 35, just ask Ricky) as he does about the concerts.  You can also be sure that many a student will relish the prospect of sending a bouncer screaming past a conductor’s nose in retaliation for any perceived slight in rehearsal. 

Over the next few days, any conductor or tutor who says ‘just once more’ for the 10th time or ‘very good, but again with feeling’ should be careful.  They can guarantee that any bowlers in the orchestra will be plotting just how quick their yorker is or evaluating the ethics of bouncing Dale Barltrop.

We all know what will happen: the staff will win in an orchestration of match fixing that would make Hansie Cronje blush- you read it here first folks.  The result however is not important (really Paul, it’s not,) because the effect of activities like the cricket match is much deeper.  Such social activities allow all musicians; students and staff, to relax and connect over an activity other than music.  The relationships formed at these AYO activities extend all the way through student’s careers and lives.  If I had scored a run for every time I heard that people originally met at camp, I would have had a higher Ashes aggregate than Michael Clarke (read that how you will). 

These relationships create better musicians and better people and helps camp to continue its role as an engine room of Australian youth music.

Now perhaps that would make Ricky Ponting feel better.

Jack Chenoweth

 

Meet the WAMMERS - tutor Genevieve Lang

Careers intertwine

Canberra-born Genevieve Lang is currently based in Sydney and works as a harpist, writer and pre-concert speaker.  After graduating from the Canberra School of Music in 1998 she took the plunge, moved to Sydney with harp in tow and started to build a career as a freelance harpist. 

Genevieve is upfront about the difficulties in choosing such a career.  She describes leaving the safe environment of the tertiary institution as a shock.  “When I was walking off stage after playing the last notes of my graduation recital, I suddenly realised that the next engagement I had was a dentist appointment the following February,” Genevieve says.  The dentist however was quickly surpassed. Her move to Sydney and association with Louise Johnson from the Sydney Symphony led to work with that orchestra, and subsequently a full diary with the Sydney Symphony, Tasmanian Symphony and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestras.

The learning curve was steep. The level of listening in a professional orchestra was intense as was the ability to manage relationships and communicate effectively with colleagues.  In short, this was the essence of professional orchestral playing.

The freelance musical life was in many ways extremely satisfying.  Ignoring the creature comforts of a weekly salary, it allowed Lang to work with an enviable variety of music, musicians and organisations. It was not however, to be forever.  “Eventually it got a bit boring” Genevieve says.  “I was looking for different challenges.  Playing the harp was still a challenge, but it was the same challenge.”  Attending the 2007 WAM program was a catalyst to a new direction in her career.  It opened up a stimulating world of communication about music in print, interviews and presenting that she hadn’t considered.  Today, both careers happily intertwine.  Her performance skills and knowledge are a valuable asset to her presentations and her presenting and writing makes her a more informed, curious, and subsequently better musician.  

By Jack Chenoweth

 

Meet the WAMMERS - Felicity Haigh

Country music, classically speaking.  

Born in rural Tamworth NSW Felicity Haigh will always be a country girl.

At the tender age of 11, Felicity decided solo music performance was not her calling. However as a member of her sisterhood quartet, Felicity has been able to keep a foot in the performance door, playing initially violin then viola.

Between a father who could, in her words, “play the spoons very well” and a mother with an intrinsic love of music, Felicity spent her youth travelling between music lessons, the family farm and boarding school. After high school Felicity begrudgingly moved to the “big smoke” – Canberra.

She brought with her her sisterly love of organisation and all things artful. She has combined these talents in a triple major in Accounting, Art History and Musicology at the Australian National University.

Her reason for attending the WAM program at the National Music Camp is clear. For Felicity, musicology is an academic pursuit without many “hands on” experiences; the two weeks of intensive WAM experience is a chance to broaden her skills base as a musicologist happy to get her hands dirty.

Now in her fourth year of study and nearing graduation, the future for Felicity is on the distant sun burnt horizon. However, she does know it will be in or “at least close to the country”. For Felicity, whether her career is in managing viable arts sponsorship models for big industry or engaging country communities in classical art forms via good business, the country will always be calling.

Written by Lachlan Snow