Around the World in 80 minutes? Not pos­sible you say! Well on May 20 I had the pleas­ure in hear­ing this seem­ingly impossible feat.
It was driven by one of Australia’s most out­stand­ing con­duct­ors, edu­cat­ors and com­posers, Ralph Hult­gren, who mas­terly con­trolled the Con­ser­vat­orium Wind Orches­tra, an exuber­ant, young, and gif­ted group of musi­cians. The rep­er­toire had the audi­ence trav­el­ling through Rus­sia, China, Aus­tralasia, Amer­ica and Ireland.

The pro­gram­ming reminded of a ses­sion given by Dr Peter Mor­ris at QBOC last year, where he gave numer­ous sug­ges­tions on how to pro­gram an inter­est­ing con­cert. My school band can­not do what the Con­ser­vat­orium Wind Orches­tra can, but I did see the pos­sib­il­it­ies for future school con­cert programs.

The play­ing was ebul­li­ent, and clearly demon­strated the tal­ent of Brisbane’s young musi­cians. Speak­ing of tal­ent, the soloist, Emma DiMarco, demon­strated a mas­terly per­form­ance of the Fantasia for Alto Sax­o­phone by Claude T. Smith, and showed how beau­ti­ful the clas­sical sax­o­phone can be.

It was a great con­cert, but a pity that it wasn’t pat­ron­ized by more of Brisbane’s music teach­ers and con­duct­ors. They missed an enjoy­able night.