The Rus­sell Gray Con­duct­ors Work­shop con­cluded just a few hours ago … and what a ter­rific suc­cess it was! We had 11 par­ti­cipants — 5 con­duct­ors and 6 observ­ers — which included a con­tin­gent of four stu­dents from USQ who made the trip from Too­woomba on the recom­mend­a­tion of Lor­raine Fuller (ABODAQ mem­ber in Toowoomba).

The after­noon star­ted with a 90-minute dis­cus­sion led by Rus­sell. In the ses­sion we covered con­duct­ing exer­cises to: sens­it­ise your band to your tech­nique; cla­rify your tech­nique to max­im­ise play­ing time for your ensemble without stop­ping to explain what you can show non-verbally; pre­pare ges­tures before they hap­pen; and to gain greater left-hand independence.

In rela­tion to rehearsal tech­niques, Rus­sell began by stat­ing it should all be in your tech­nique, although with younger groups we do have to teach stu­dents what they need to do for what they see. Refer­ring to a psy­cho­logy study done with his band in the UK, Rus­sell thought the most import­ant out­come was that the first five minutes of a rehearsal are most cru­cial to estab­lish­ing atten­tion and focus which lasts through­out the entire rehearsal. He uses hymn tunes in this first phase of the rehearsal and to increase focus he has the ensemble modify the rhythm, dynam­ics and artic­u­la­tion of the ori­ginal hymn. Rus­sell has developed 101 ways to modify a hymn (I’ll see if I can get it for ABODAQ mem­bers!) which he used to get his bands in the ‘zone’. He also coun­selled that before you stop an ensemble know what you’re going to say and find ways to keep all mem­bers of the ensemble involved.

In addi­tion to the above, among the most import­ant ideas I took away from the open­ing ses­sion were: (a) to record rehears­als and listen back to them with post-its which are to be plastered all over my scores with next rehearsal ideas/needs; (b) to work with my ensembles so that all stu­dents respond in the same way espe­cially to artic­u­la­tion and dynamic mark­ings; and (c) to bet­ter use extra-musical ideas to make musical con­cepts more access­ible to students.

After a short break dur­ing which time QYO Wind Sym­phony arrived and setup we changed gears and star­ted the second part of the afternoon.

Work­ing with five ‘cour­ageous’ (his words not mine!) con­duct­ors, Rus­sell chal­lenged us to change vari­ous parts of our con­duct­ing beha­viour to be more effect­ive com­mu­nic­at­ors from the podium. Video was taken and is being developed into a mini-podcast. Fea­tured on this mini-podcast will be the con­duct­ing par­ti­cipants: Paul Kucharski (BGGS), Grace Whit­ing (Hill­brook Anglican Col­lege), David Jones (Hill­brook Anglican Col­lege), Peter Fran­cis (Iona Col­lege) and myself (Can­ter­bury Col­lege). The QYO Wind Sym­phony was a respons­ive ensemble and gave pos­it­ive and con­struct­ive feed­back to the con­duct­ors. Most of the rep­er­toire for the after­noon was drawn from QYO Wind Symphony’s con­cert pro­gram being per­formed at 3pm on Sunday 16 (2009) with the Ulm Youth Wind Phil­har­monic in the Old Museum Con­cert Hall.

This won­der­ful event was made pos­sible by: Ellaways’ $500 spon­sor­ship towards expenses for the day and also use of their very fine rehearsal/performance space at their Under­wood store; the valu­able par­ti­cip­a­tion by the QYO Wind Sym­phony (Renee Dent, con­ductor) as the ‘lab band’; the com­bined efforts of mem­bers of ABODAQ man­age­ment com­mit­tee esp. with the logist­ics being handled so well by Peter Fran­cis, David Jones, Craig Dav­id­son and Paul Kucharski; and, of course, Rus­sell Gray.

See you at the next ABODAQ event!

No pho­tos avail­able right now.

Please verify your set­tings, clear your RSS cache on the Slickr Flickr Admin page and check your Flickr feed