When the kids joined in

“Would you like to join the orchestra?” Stan and Mabel asked the rabbit.

“Yes!!!!” cried a voice from the front row.

The enraptured child was one of 6355 audience members (young and old) who attended performances and events last week as part of the WA Symphony Orchestra’s Education Week.

The Beat of Your Feet on Sunday was one of 15 concerts WASO performed during the week. It featured the enthusiastic educator and composer Paul Rissmann who introduced the orchestral instruments, taught the audience some songs and then narrated Jason Chapman’s book Stan and Mabel, a story of two animals who travel to Italy to audition for the orchestra. The illustrations were projected on screens, vocalist Libby Hammer helped with the songs  and Benjamin Northey conducted the 50 plus orchestra.

The child in the front row wasn’t the only person getting swept up with the excitement. Children and adults were singing, doing actions, delighting in the instrumental solos and completely enthralled. There’s something so decadent about having literature, art and music brought to life by such talented professionals!

The day before we attended a Cushion Concert where the story of The Lion of Loved was brought to life in a similar manner by Rissmann and the11-piece EChO ensemble.

Paul Rissmann and the EChO musicians

This smaller scale concert was held in the more intimate Wardle Room of the concert hall. Even in the back row we were close enough to feel the reverberations in our chests from Andrew Sinclair’s marvelous double bass evocation of an elephant. Again Rissmann’s warm welcome and lively interaction with the music had the children captivated. The advantage of the back row was that my four year old daughter could dance her heart out. Or snuggle up when things got a bit tense as the jungle animals tried to rescue Leo the lion from the raging river.

Libby Hammer’s bubbly personality and warm vocals were an asset to both shows. And the "have-a-go" on the instruments at the end is always popular. But the real success lay in Rissmann’s compositions, which captured the zesty energy of the picture books and also the moments of sweet pathos while featuring specific instruments and some very singable tunes.

A few nights later my children randomly began singing “We’re going to Italy to audition in a competition”.

It was a busy week for the orchestra who performed The Lion Who Loved and The Beat of Your Feet during the week to school children, along with Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants. There was also a conducting masterclass, the Rusty Orchestra concert, Harmony Music performances for children with special needs, the Hospital Orchestra Project at PMH and the Composition Project Final Showing.

 WASO's next children’s concerts is November 5th when ABC favourites Lah-Lah and Buzz join the orchestra.

The Gruffalo comes to WASO

He has terrible tusks and terrible claws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws... and he was being dragged up the steps of the Perth Concert Hall by a toddler.

It was the WA Symphony Orchestra's Gruffalo concert and one boy had brought his stuffed Gruffalo teddy along for the show. The concert hall was buzzing with children flocking to see Julia Donaldson's best-selling book The Gruffalo brought to life on a big screen with live music by the orchestra. 

The story follows a little mouse walking through the forest and deflecting a fox, an owl and other predators with descriptions of a terrifying monster. Turns out the Gruffalo of his imagining is real and the quick-thinking mouse has to find a way of tricking him too. The animated version of the book includes a squirrel family as narrators, and the sequel Gruffalo's Child flips the tables and tells the story from the point of view of a small Gruffalo girl.

My family embarked on the trip with great excitement. They love getting a taste of the concerts mum is always going to for work, and WASO's kids concerts are a great place to start.     Conductor and orchestrator Terry Davies introduced the sections of the orchestra and the musical motifs associated with the different animals: the flute for the owl, the percussion for the fox, the tuba for the Gruffalo. And then the film began, projected on screens around the hall. 

There is something special about live concerts; there was far more participation that would be generated from watching the movie at home. The young audience members soon recognised the familiar lines and began to join in:"I'm going to have lunch with a Gruff-a-lo".

Matthew laughed uproariously at the slapstick moments: the fox getting snow on his head, the owl crashing into the trees. Once Tahlia realised the Gruffalo wasn't going to appear on stage and the snake and fox etc weren't real, she started to relax and enjoy the show too.

Of course with the antics happening on screen there wasn't much focus on the orchestra, but they played well under Davies, who used a monitor on his podium to coordinate the timing with the movie. The concert finished in under an hour before the kids had time to get squirmy and then we headed home to read the book just one more time!

Grrrrr...uffalo!

Oliver! works its magic

The musicals just keep rolling through Perth - this weekend ICW Productions opened their season of Oliver! It was the perfect opportunity to take my son Matthew to his first musical. We finished reading Oliver Twist recently and Dickens' story of dark dirty London and the little boy who wanted more has captured his imagination.

ICW Productions (founded by Ian Westrip) aims to provide work for WAAPA graduates and bring high quality productions to the community. Oliver opened on Saturday night  at the performing arts centre at St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls and will run until the 27th August.

We couldn't make the matinee show so I braved a late night with my five year old and went on opening night. The thrill of being dressed up and out late, the sparkling foyer lights of the beautiful theatre, the folding chairs and the chocolate at interval were all part of the experience. And of course the music and dance worked their magic.

Westrip's daughter Charlotte made her directorial debut and her love for Oliver! was tangible. The story unfolded clearly and she allowed the personalities of her cast to flourish.

Lukas Steinwandel (Oliver) 

On Saturday night Oliver was sung by the sweet-voiced Lukas Steinwandel (star of The Snowman with Perth Symphony Orchestra last year). The Artful Dodger was sung by Jacob Miles who seems a confident stage animal and was well cast his wide grin and mischievous energy. The two boys were supported by a motley gang of orphans/street urchins who moved and sung with strong-voiced enthusiasm.

Phoebe Jackson (Nancy) and Jacob Miles (Dodger)

The adult cast included WAAPA graduate Phoebe Jackson who played a fiery, big-hearted Nancy with a well-rounded voice. Her rollicking rendition of Oom Pah Pah (wittily choreographed by by Lauchlan Edward Bain) was Matthew's laugh-out-loud moment. Her nasty boyfriend Bill Sikes was sung by an impressively menacing Tim Campbell who epitomised evil so effectively that his eventual demise was the talking point of the show for Matthew.

Fagin was sung with gentle humour by Jay Walsh, although the liberties he took with Reviewing the Situation threw the pit orchestra (conducted by Ian Westrip) into occasional disarray.  Mr Brownlow was performed by Ron Macqueen with the stateliness of Ian McKellen (Gandalf). Dean Misdale was a larger than life and slightly camp (not sure why?) Mr Bumble.

The sound operation (Alex Taubaland) and lighting (Chris Hastie) were the weakest link on opening night, but the glitches will iron out as the production team settles in the venue.

I'm grateful we have semi-professional companies like ICW to provide a platform for our talent and magical memories for a mum and her son.

Peter and the Wolf review

“It’s the Wolf!” the children clamour. A masked actor is sneaking past the orchestra as they warm up onstage. The concert hasn’t even begun but the fun is already underway.

Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was the concluding concert in the WA Symphony Orchestra’s Education Week program which included a birthday party for the education ensemble EChO, the world premiere of student compositions, the popular amateur Rusty Orchestra concert and a hospital concert.

Tahlia's first visit to the Perth Concert Hall

The fresh take on Peter and the Wolf was presented by Platypus Theatre (from Canada) who were a resounding success at WASO’s inaugural Education Week last year. Artistic director Peter Duschenes demonstrated the concept of musical characterisation with WASO and conductor Chris van Tuinen performing excerpts including Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee and Schumann’s Traumerei. The musical themes for Prokofiev’s ‘symphony for children’ were introduced and the story unfolded with the help of masks, puppets and mime plus a few minor plot adjustments for modern sensibilities: the wolf stuffed the duck in a sack rather than swallowing it and the huntsmen were police who ran out of ammunition allowing Peter and the help of a dozen audience volunteers to net the wolf.

Platypus Theatre kept the music central, drawing all their theatrics from the musical gestures from the bird reluctant to help Peter distract the wolf to the tug of war over the wolf’s tail. The antics were well-pitched with stock-in-trade pantomime gestures prompting shrieks of “He’s over there” from the thrilled young audience.

My three year old loved the cat because of its music (kudos to the clarinettists!) while my five year old thought it was hilarious when the wolf couldn’t spot Peter and friends hiding right behind him: “He must’ve thought the person who woke him up was invisible!”

It was fabulous to see WASO investing so wholeheartedly in the vital job of reaching a young audience. The high demand for tickets during Education Week indicates there is no shortage of parents and children keen to give the adventure of classical music a go.


This review copyright The West Australian 2016.

Perth Festival FREE events

 It's my favourite time of the year!
 

Perth International Arts Festival 2016 kicks off today with the unveiling of the Chevron Festival Gardens, the new Festival home at the very new Elizabeth Quay. Festival Director Wendy Martin's home-grown focus this year means there are stellar WA artists on display everywhere you look, especially in the ambitious Saturday night opening show Home.   

Home is a theatrical spectacular at Langley Park (starts 7:30) featuring 500 performers including The Drones, The Triffids, The Panics, Pigram Brothers, The Waifs, Ernie Dingo, John Butler Trio, Tim Minchin, Shaun Tan, Tim Winton... the list foes on and on!

I will be profiling specific events and posting reviews over the next few weeks but today I just wanted to give you a heads of on the FREE events this year so that everyone of all ages can have a chance to participate.

Home FREE EVENT

Langley Park

Sat 13 Feb, 7.30pm.

The Snake Run Project FREE EVENT

Albany

Sat 13 Feb, 5.30pm.

A Mile in My Shoes FREE EVENT

Stirling Gardens

Tues 18 – Sun 28 Feb, Tue 1 – Sun 6 March. Tues - Fri 4 – 7pm, Sat – Sun 11am- 1pm. 

Perth Writers Festival Family Day FREE EVENT

UWA

Sunday 21 Feb, All day.

Screenkids

Tickets for Screenkids are $10 per program. The all-day digital exhibition at the venues are FREE.

Orana Cinema, Albany

Sat 20 Feb – Sun 21 Feb

·         Program A: 10am and 1pm
·         Program B: 11.30am and 2.30pm

Subiaco Arts Centre

Fri 26 Feb – Sun 28 Feb.

Fri 26 Feb:

·         Program A: 4pm
·          Program B: 5.30pm

Sat 27- Sun 28:

·         Program A: 10am, 1 & 4pm
·         Program B: 11.30am, 2.30 & 5.30pm


For more details see https://perthfestival.com.au

See you soon at a show!

Rhythm in Your Rubbish

Thousands of children and their families experienced the magnificence of the Perth Concert Hall on Sunday as the WA Symphony Orchestra threw open the doors for its inaugural Open Day. The smell of popcorn wafted through the foyer and children darted from one activity to the next: face painting, make your own instrument, a silent disco, a Kombi Van photo booth and free performances by the WA Youth Orchestra, WASO chorus and Vagabond woodwind quartet.

When we arrived for the Rhythm in Your Rubbish ticketed concert the three levels of the foyer were a riot of happy noise as children explored with irreverential enthusiasm. It’s hard to imagine a better way for WASO to tackle the ‘threshold anxiety’ deterring people from concert halls and classical music than by turning the building into a giant musical playground.

The auditorium might be internationally regarded for its acoustics but my four year old was most awed by the cavernous ceiling and the red glowing aisle lights: “Mum they have alphabet lights on the seats!”

His focus turned to the front as two vagabonds (Danielle Desormeaux and Peter Duschenes from Platypus Theatre) arrived onstage and began playing and squabbling over bits of rubbish. The auditorium of children laughed, clapped and watched entranced for 60 minutes as the two mime artists explored the percussive potential of buckets, bottles, utensils and pipes, accompanied by the lush sound of a full symphony orchestra.

The orchestra under the assured conducting of Christopher Dragon provided musical slapstick (Copland’s Buckaroo Holiday), waltz music (Strauss’ Wiener Blut) and the soundtrack to an animal puppet show (Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite). A highlight was an excerpt from Dvorak’s Cello Concerto played ardently by cellist Louise McKay with the multi-talented Duschenes playing along on a garden saw.

The highlight for my son was when the actors tussled over a foam pillow until it ripped in half. As the actors slept on their pieces of foam the vast concert hall ceiling began to shimmer like starlight. “It’s not time for sleeping,” my son said as he snuggled up and listened to the orchestra gently play Brahms’ Wiegenlied, Guten Abend.

We will long remember the day the Concert Hall became a playground.

Diego Matheuz: music and hope

“I saw children having lessons and giving concerts and I fell in love,” says Diego Matheuz remembering his first visit to El Sistema as a child. “I knew from that first day that I would be a musician all my life.”

Matheuz is in Perth rehearsing with the WA Symphony Orchestra. The conductor was a graduate of Venezuela’s El Sistema, a music education program which WASO has recently begun to implement in schools in Kwinana. The 30 year old is the perfect ambassador for the Sistema program with his deeply passionate approach to music and self-effacing personality, not to mention his pin-up good looks. 

The Venezuelan El Sistema was founded in 1975 by economist and musician Jose Antonio Abreu whose vision to empower disadvantaged children through music has revolutionised both social intervention and music education worldwide.

Matheuz grew up in the city of Barquisimeto and while crime and drugs threatened many of his peers Matheuz spent his childhood making music. He attended Sistema for five hours a day most days of the week, working hard to fit in his normal schoolwork. He began the violin when he was nine and by fifteen was touring internationally with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, the Sistema’s professional orchestra. Matheuz firmly believes music can create social transformation.

“An orchestra is like a perfect community. It is a wonderful way of learning to communicate, listen to each other and create a sense of community. If you are part of creating that experience as a child then as an adult it gives you hope; you have a vision, a possibility of a different life.”

Providing new opportunities to impoverished children is what inspired WASO’s community engagement manager Cassandra Lake who launched the orchestra’s Sistema music program with pre-primary classes in Kwinana last year.

“I am inspired by the stories from teachers saying the classroom dynamic is different because children are concentrating better and learning to work together,” Lake said. “I had a mum say to me ‘My son looks forward to going to school now. He’s singing all the time because of your program’. Another parent who was struggling to put a roof over their child’s head said to me they never imagined their child would have this opportunity.”

The community education initiative came from WASO’s desire to be more relevant to the community in which they operate. 300 students from Medina Primary School, Kwinana Christian School and North Parmelia Primary School are having weekly group lessons using their inbuilt instrument – the voice – as a starting point. Lessons on stringed instruments will follow with the goal of forming an orchestra.

The Sistema approach is renowned for its joyful and encouraging atmosphere. Matheuz explains this is because the emphasis is on music making as a group rather than an individual pursuit.

“We are not thinking about competitions,” says Matheuz, “we don’t have the vision of creating soloists like a conservatorium would.  It is more about being a group, an orchestra, like being a family together. In football you have a psychologist to keep the team together because there are too many ‘stars’. But an orchestra doesn’t need that because the focus is the music.”

Despite (or because of) the democratic ideology Sistema’s graduate list includes plenty of stars. 33 year old Gustavo Dudamel is chief conductor of the Los Angelos Philharmonic and Edicson Ruiz plays bass with the Berlin Philharmonic. And of course Matheuz who made his professional debut in 2008 with Orchestra Mozart in Bologna and is now principal conductor of Teatro la Fenice and principal guest conductor with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Mozart. Matheuz has attracted the attention of mentors like Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado and Abreu and is now considered global hot property. But he deflects the focus away from the individual. 

“I am lucky to have all these people and my family supporting me,” he says. “I thank God for this opportunity.”

This weekend Matheuz will conduct Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 2 with WASO which he promises will give the audience a vision of their own.

“This piece can make you cry and fall in love and remember things, it gives you hope. It gives you a very special moment and that is what I hope the audience will experience.”

This article copyright the West Australian newspaper.

Symphony in the City

 

 The sea breeze floated gently across the river to Langley Park and the blistering heat melted into a balmy summer evening. Classical music admirers picnicked alongside cricket fans and young families in an idyllic concert setting. The WA Symphony Orchestra’s Symphony in the City is fast becoming an established summer tradition.

 



My concert companions

A huge floodlit shell housed the orchestra and choir and a camera crew and audio team projected the performance onto screens around the park. The concert was also streamed live to Northbridge, Albany, Broome, Esperance, Kalgoorlie, Margaret River and Port Hedland.

The logistics alone were impressive. And there was good incentive; an estimated 20 000 people received a season brochure and witnessed a sample of WASO’s 2014 program, all in a relaxed, non-snobby atmosphere.

Actor/comedian Eddie Perfect introduced the orchestra and the concert began with a selection of movie music including themes from Star Wars, Schindler’s List and The Fellowship of the Ring. The orchestra were in festive spirit – the first time I’ve seen a cor anglais player perform with flashing Christmas earings – and played with energy. Assistant conductor Chris Dragon took the helm for The Fellowship of the Ring wearing a bright red dinner jacket and conducting with flair. The Schindler’s List main theme was played with lyricism by assistant concertmaster Semra Lee-Smith.



Matthew gets his first concert lanyard

The WASO Chorus joined the orchestra for stirring performances of Verdi’s Triumphal March and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. The well-blended sound of the chorus (the legacy of retiring chorus director Marilyn Phillips) was noticeable even in the outdoor setting.

This was the final concert for principal conductor Paul Daniel and Nimrod (Elgar’s Enigma Variations) was an apt farewell, performed by the orchestra with heightened tenderness.

The lesser-known Knightsbridge March from Eric Coates’ London Suite was a tribute to the conductor’s homeland. “This is to remember just how great England is despite what’s happening down the road,” quipped Daniel with a nod toward the WACA grounds.

And of course there were the now-obligatory fireworks, bells and choir for Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture bringing the concert to a spectacular, noisy finale. It was a fitting end to the year for our enterprising state orchestra.

 

 

 

                  This review copyright The West Australian newspaper 2013.