Category Archives: Band repertoire

Repertoire 2011

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Dear Col­leagues,

Please find below links to the new rep­er­toire list for con­cert band music for 2011 and the updated rep­er­toire for orches­tra list. There are new works present in orches­tra from Hal Leonard which are pleas­ing to see–a revis­it­ing of some older titles. The new con­cert band works include some really excel­lent works this year, espe­cially at the younger levels. I am sure some invest­ig­a­tion will allow you to con­nect with the works which will make your year a very sat­is­fy­ing one musically.

Best wishes to you

Ralph Hult­gren
Head, Open Con­ser­vat­orium
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium Grif­fith Uni­ver­sity
P.O. Box 3428 South Bank Queens­land 4101, Aus­tralia
140 Grey Street, South Bris­bane Queens­land 4101, Aus­tralia
Phone: (61 7) 3735 6253 Fax: (61 7) 3735 6366

Rep­er­toire for Band 2011

Rep­er­toire for Full Orches­tra 2011

Commission Consortium

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The Aus­tralian Band and Orches­tra Dir­ect­ors’ Asso­ci­ation Queens­land is proud to announce the inaug­ural ABODA QLD Com­mis­sion­ing Consortium—a unique oppor­tun­ity for ABODA QLD mem­bers to have a say in the rep­er­toire of the future. It is very dif­fi­cult for schools to afford com­mis­sions on their own. A con­sor­tium pools your money with that of people from other schools and ensembles and makes it pos­sible for dir­ect­ors to share with their stu­dents the com­mis­sion­ing of a new work, as well as the joy of per­form­ing the premiere of the work in their area. ABODA QLD hopes the com­mis­sion­ing pro­ject will become a yearly activity—a tan­gible sign of the work of ABODA QLD to pro­mote our profession.

Com­poser

We are happy to announce that Brian Hogg will be the com­poser of our first con­sor­tium. Brian is well known to all Aus­tralian band dir­ect­ors and is cur­rently the Cre­at­ive Arts Dir­ector for The Sal­va­tion Army East­ern Vic­toria Divi­sion. His well-known and highly regarded com­pos­i­tions for band include Llwyn Onn, In Still­ness, The New Anzacs, The Stone Guest and Fan­fare and Pro­ces­sional.

Dif­fi­culty level

The com­mis­sioned work will be grade 3 stand­ard and 3½ minutes long, inten­ded for the major­ity of sec­ond­ary school ensembles. It will be scored for stand­ard con­cert band instru­ment­a­tion and is inten­ded to have an empha¬sis on emo­tional con­tent and artistic merit.

Cost

Total cost to be a mem­ber of the 2011 ABODA QLD Com­mis­sion­ing Con­sor­tium is $250.00. Each par­ti­cip­at­ing school will receive a full score and all parts in PDF format, allow­ing you to print as many parts as your ensemble requires.

Time frame

The com­pos­i­tion is sched­uled to be delivered to con­sor­tium mem­bers in July 2011.

Premiere per­form­ances

The world premiere will be per­formed by the Wind Sym­phony at the Mary­bor­ough Con­fer­ence Gala Con­cert in early July 2011; how­ever, each first per­form­ance by a par­ti­cip­at­ing ensemble is con­sidered a premiere. The names of all par­ti­cip­at­ing schools (or com­munity ensembles) and their dir­ect­ors will be prin­ted on the cover page of the conductor’s score. Con­sor­tium mem­bers will receive exclus­ive per­form­ance rights to the work for six months after the premiere.

What you need to do now

Please down­load the form and send it to:

ABODA QLD
Com­mis­sion­ing Con­sor­tium 2011
c/o 17 Redgum Close
Bridge­man Downs QLD 4035

An account will be for­war­ded to you.

Craig Dabel­stein
Chair of the Com­mis­sion­ing Pro­ject 2011
ABODA QLD

Summer Conducting School, part 1

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Mel­bourne: ABODA Vic­toria – Sum­mer Con­duct­ing School

Prin­cipal teacher: Pro­fessor Craig Kirchhoff

Sunday 9/01/2010

Just star­ted in the first ses­sion and thought I should really be shar­ing some of my exper­i­ences with ABODA QLD mem­bers. So here I go with a few thought starters that Craig Kirch­hoff put out in his open­ing ses­sion … just in point form.

  • To be suc­cess­ful in mov­ing stu­dents on their jour­ney from play­ing in an ensemble to mak­ing music in ensemble we (con­duct­ors) must have a love of music, teach­ing and people.
  • Share who you are with your stu­dents and how you feel about the music.
  • Being on the podium is not about musi­cians see­ing a conductor–rather about musi­cians see­ing you!
  • Why is the three year old Jona­thon in the video below so com­pel­ling? He expressed the music … unin­hib­ited, free, inspired, fore­casts what’s to come etc.

Guides for the week:

  • If some­thing doesn’t work it’s OK. Learn­ing that involves fail­ure is very power­ful. Only thing that is not OK is not going for it
  • Live in the moment on the podium. Really listen to the ensemble and hear what they are doing. Find­ing the right ges­ture to get the right sound–it’s not how it looks, it’s how the music sounds
  • Use con­duct­ing ges­ture to rein­force talking–while talk­ing. Non-verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion is most import­ant. How you use your body effects everything. Break through your mem­brane … respond to the music rather than won­der­ing what other people are think­ing about you.
  • Don’t let your ges­tures be con­trary to the music.
  • Choose the size of your “con­duct­ing can­vas” to suit the music! Some pieces require a large por­trait can­vas oth­ers are small cameo canvas
  • Emo­tion­ally con­nect to music and students
  • What stu­dents leave with us with is how they felt in our ensembles
  • Know/feel the emo­tional land­scape of pieces you conduct
  • Musi­cians play together by breath­ing together

    • The open­ing ses­sion was fol­lowed by a basic con­duct­ing tech­niques session–then an all after­noon ses­sion (with a small break) read­ing through the rep­er­toire options for con­duct­ing par­ti­cipants (30 ran­ging from begin­ners to very advanced). Click here for the rep­er­toire list. This list was put together by Jemima Bunn (ABODA National Pres­id­ent & ABODA Vic­toria Vice-president), Joanne Heaton (ABODA Vic­toria pres­id­ent) and Michael Jongebloed (Hal Leonard Australia).

    More tomor­row!

    Rapid Reading Day 2011

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    Get the year off to a great start by attend­ing the Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music’s Rapid Read­ing Day.

    When: 27 Feb­ru­ary 2011
    Where: Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium, Grif­fith Uni­ver­sity, South Bank
    Cost: $5 at the door
    10:30am–Registration/Trade Dis­plays
    11:00am–Session 1 — Strings (Opera Space), Band (Basil Jones Orches­tral Hall)
    12:30pm–Lunch in Foyer/ Trade Dis­plays
    1:30pm–Session 2 — Strings (Opera Space), Band (Basil Jones Orches­tral Hall)
    4:00pm–Wine, Cheese and Trade Dis­plays
    5:00pm–Conclusion

    For fur­ther inform­a­tion con­tact:
    Jason Budge, Pro­ject Officer
    Ph. 3735 6306
    Fax 3735 6366
    Email: open-conservatorium@griffith.edu.au

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    QBOC2010Live–Concert 5: band and strings

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    Can­ter­bury Col­lege Ritor­nello
    Can­ter­bury Col­lege is a co-educational Anglican School of 1400 stu­dents from PrePrep through Year 12. The col­lege sup­ports a music pro­gram of 400 stu­dents involved in seven choirs, four string orches­tras, a sym­phony orches­tra, two stage bands, three con­cert bands and numer­ous cham­ber ensembles. The Can­ter­bury Col­lege Ritor­nello is focused on devel­op­ing the tal­ents of the most advanced string stu­dents and is led by Mrs Belinda Wil­li­ams, a former mem­ber of the Aus­tralian Cham­ber Orchestra.

    Hill­brook Wind Sym­phony
    Hill­brook is a co-educational Anglican sec­ond­ary school of approx­im­ately 600 stu­dents. It was foun­ded in 1987 by a group of teach­ers look­ing for a dif­fer­ent approach to tra­di­tional school­ing sys­tems. Hill­brook Music is an ener­getic and dynamic pro­gram with a strong con­nec­ted­ness between aca­demic and co-curricular stud­ies. The Wind Sym­phony is Hillbrook’s senior con­cert band. It is made up of stu­dents from years 8 to 12. In recent years this ensemble has had the oppor­tun­ity to work with guests includ­ing, Ralph Hult­gren, Dr Mat­thew George, John Reyn­olds and Frank Ticheli. The Wind Sym­phony has also shared the stage with some of Australia’s finest bands includ­ing Queens­land Wind Orches­tra, Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium Wind Orches­tra, Queens­land Youth Orches­tra ensembles and tour­ing ensembles.

    The Can­ter­bury Col­lege Ritor­nello opened the con­cert with the Hol­berg Suite, Op. 40 (“Suite in olden style”) by Edvard Grieg (Kalmus). Hill­brook Wind Sym­phony fol­lowed with:

    Wash­ing­ton Post March, John Philip Sousa arr. Jay Bocook (Music Works)
    Klezmer Dances, Stephen Bulla (Curnow Music)
    Fate of the Gods, Steven Reineke (Barnhouse)

    The stu­dents’ per­form­ances were a credit to their schools and their dir­ect­ors (Belinda Wil­li­ams and David Jones) and the con­cert was well-received and appre­ci­ated by the del­eg­ates, par­ents and friends.

    QBOC2010Live–Concert 4: Tim Reynish & QWO

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    Tim Reynish and the QWODay 2 of QBOC2010 fin­ished in fine style with a con­cert by the Queens­land Wind Orches­tra led by Timothy Reyn­ish. The pro­gram con­sisted of mod­ern Brit­ish wind band repertoire–repertoire of which Tim Reyn­ish has an intim­ate know­ledge. Tim con­duc­ted the major­ity of the con­cert with ABODA QLD Pres­id­ent Dr Lewes Ped­dell con­duct­ing Tails Aus Dem Vood Vien­noise by Bill Connor.

    The pro­gram:

    Masque — Ken­neth Hes­keth (Faber Music)

    Tails Aus Dem Vood Vien­noise — Bill Con­nor (Mae­cenas Music)

    Song of Lir — Fer­gal Car­roll (Mae­cenas Music)

    Yid­dish Dances — Adam Gorb (Mae­cenas Music)

    Here is a video of the first piece from the pro­gram, Ken­neth Hesketh’s Masque.

    Con­grat­u­la­tions to the two con­duct­ors and the Queens­land Wind Orches­tra for an excel­lent per­form­ance. The rep­er­toire was extremely chal­len­ging and took a high degree of musi­cian­ship to bring to life. I look for­ward to the day when more wind ensembles in Aus­tralia can per­form rep­er­toire like we heard tonight at the highest levels as exem­pli­fied by the QWO.

    Bravo!

    QBOC2010Live—Thirty years of wind band commissions

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    Timothy Reynish

    Tim Reynish’s most recent appoint­ments are Tutor in the Fac­ulty of Inter­na­tional Cham­ber Music at the Royal North­ern Col­lege of Music, and vis­it­ing Pro­fessor in Orches­tral Stud­ies at the Con­ser­vatoire of Kharkov, Ukraine. He suc­ceeded Philip Jones as Head of School of Wind and Per­cus­sion, a post he retired from after more than a quarter of a cen­tury and developed the wind orches­tra of the RNCM to become recog­nised as one of the best in the world.

    Tim’s lec­ture this morn­ing was titled ‘Eng­lish Renais­sance: thirty years of wind band com­mis­sions 1980–2010′. In his inim­it­able way, Tim presen­ted some of the most stun­ning wind band com­pos­i­tion from the last thirty years, many of which are still largely, and undeservedly, unknown. Tim played examples of the music of Ben­nett, Bing­ham, Maw, Mus­grave, Bour­geois, Ellerby, Gorb, Greg­son, Hes­keth, McNeff, Sparke and Woolfenden — a real eye-opener for many whose know­ledge of rep­er­toire is dom­in­ated by Amer­ican com­posers thanks to the over­whelm­ing mar­ket­ing of publishers.

    Another won­drous hour in the pres­ence of Timothy Reynish.

    Tim Reynish’s Thoughts On Conducting

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    Timothy Reyn­ish is a pro­lific writer and com­ment­ator on wind band lit­er­at­ure and con­duct­ing. Luck­ily for us, he also tal­en­ted, good humoured, altru­istic and extremely gen­er­ous with his time and expert­ise. Espe­cially for QBOC2010, Tim has kindly provided us with a 24-page doc­u­ment on his ‘Thoughts On Conducting’.

    In this art­icle you will find some of Tim’s ideas on the tech­nique of dir­ect­ing, choice of rep­er­toire, pre­par­a­tion, con­duct­ing tips, rehearsal tech­niques, score study, and links to find more information.

    Down­load Tim’s Thoughts On Con­duct­ing and enjoy.

    QBOC2010Live—Concert 2: Australian Army Band Brisbane

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    Australian Army Band BrisbaneCap­tain Lind­say Mee, Conductor

    Since its form­a­tion in 1949, the Aus­tralian Army Band-Brisbane (AAB-B) has become known through­out Queens­land as one of the finest Mil­it­ary Bands in Aus­tralia. The Band provides music for Regal, Vice-Regal, State and Cere­mo­nial occa­sions in addi­tion to per­form­ing at fest­ivals, giv­ing con­certs and present­ing pre­ci­sion march­ing dis­plays as well as ful­filling its mil­it­ary role as an Aus­tralian Army Band.

    The pro­gram:

    Com­mando March (Samuel Barber)
    Fest­ive Over­ture (Shostakovich/Hunsberger)
    Canticles (Johan de Meij)
    Sym­phonic Dances from ‘Fid­dler on the Roof’ (arr. Hearshen)
    I Dreamed a Dream (arr. King)
    Bet­ter With a Band (arr. King)
    Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans (arr. Wilson)
    Land of Make Believe (arr. Taylor)
    The Boy Does Noth­ing (Dick­son)
    Hoe Down from ‘Rodeo’ (Cop­land)
    Night­fall in Camp (Pope)

    Fea­tur­ing con­cert band and jazz ensemble rep­er­toire, this con­cert was a ter­rific way to end the first day of QBOC2010. The AAB-B play with tech­nical pre­ci­sion and music­al­ity and are a much under­val­ued part of Brisbane’s musical life.

    QBOC2010Live—Concert 1: QCGU Brass Band

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    QCGU Brass BandThe Con­ser­vat­orium Brass Band is a unique ter­tiary ensemble. Formed in 2006, this ensemble is based on the tra­di­tional Brit­ish Brass Band format. The QCGU Brass Band involves stu­dents from the Bach­elor of Music and Bach­elor of Music Stud­ies degree pro­grams and enables mem­bers to fur­ther develop their brass band train­ing in many areas includ­ing per­form­ance, know­ledge of rep­er­toire and ensemble direction.

    After a morn­ing of con­duct­ing tech­nique ses­sions, del­eg­ates enjoyed the chance to relax and watch the QCGU Brass Band per­form, under the dir­ec­tion of Head of Brass, Greg Aitken.

    The rep­er­toire for the con­cert was:

    The Red Machine (Peter Gra­ham)
    Song and Dance (Philip Sparke)
    Beneath the Wil­lows (Philip Harper)
    Con­certo for French Horn and Brass Band, 1st movt (Edward Greg­son)
    Slaid­burn (Wil­liam Rim­mer)
    The King­dom Tri­umphant (Eric Ball)

    The Brass Band played a pol­ished and musical per­form­ance and con­grat­u­la­tions must go to soloists Dani­elle Rich (cor­net), Shan­nan Lawrence (flu­gel horn) and Sharn McIver (horn). The per­form­ance was not fault­less, but when listen­ing to a high qual­ity ensemble such as this it must be remembered that these are not pro­fes­sional musi­cians: they are stu­dents and they are learn­ing how to per­form in dif­fer­ent envir­on­ments. Greg Aitken has done an excel­lent job in train­ing his musi­cians: they are exposed to new and stand­ard brass band rep­er­toire, they are exposed to the exper­i­ence of being soloists with an ensemble (there were three stu­dent soloists on this pro­gram) and, in Ben Crocker’s case, to the exper­i­ence of conducting.

    While listen­ing to this con­cert I couldn’t help but won­der why wind band con­duct­ors do not insist on their trum­peters play­ing cor­net when it is called for by the score (espe­cially when the score calls for a com­bin­a­tion of trum­pets and cornets–five trum­pets do not sound like three cor­nets and two trum­pets!) Alto sax­o­phon­ists have to double on sop­rano, flut­ists double on piccolo–why is there not more emphasis put on trum­pet play­ers to double on cor­net when required?

    The intro­duc­tion of the Brass Band to the QCGU, led by Greg Aitken, will hope­fully help to cre­ate brass play­ers who are musi­cians with exper­i­ence of many styles of music, not just orches­tral stand­ards that many will not get the oppor­tun­ity to play again in later life.

    Bravo to the QCGU Brass Band and Head of Brass, Greg Aitken!