Janielle's Musical Escapades

Royal South Street Competition

Yesterday (29th August), I set off on a bus trip to Ballarat (2 hours away) with my mates from Blackburn High’s Senior Strings Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra. We were going for the annual Royal South Street music competition, held at the Her Majesty’s Theatre in Ballarat every year. It starts in July and ends in October. The competition has all sorts of categories – anything to do with the arts. Various bands, music ensembles, orchestras and dance groups from schools all over Victoria participate in the South Street competition every year.

If anyone’s wondering, the difference between the Symphony and Senior Strings Orchestra is that Symphony includes all orchestra instruments – the strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion – whereas Senior Strings comprises only string instruments – violin, cello, viola and double bass.

We competed first on Senior Strings in the afternoon, and were followed by 6 other school ensembles. Mrs. Robyn Carrington was our conductor and we played 2 items: A Gaelic Overture by David O’ Fallon and Mantras by Richard Meyer. Our school won second place, by the way! Balwyn High School came first and they well deserved it – they had splendid intonation and were so tight in playing as an ensemble!

Later in the evening, we prepared for the Symphony Orchestra competition. The Symphony Orchestra is probably the biggest and best one to watch. Blackburn High’s Symphony Orchestra is privileged to have Mr. Andrew Wailes as our conductor. He is really good cause’ he has his own style and he’s professional in not just conducting, but in leading the entire orchestra with a clear direction each time we are presented with new repertoire to master.

Mr. Wailes often gives us really difficult and professional level pieces that are usually meant for professional orchestras to play. But thankfully we’re most likely always able to achieve a commendable standard (considering we’re only a school orchestra) because Mr. Wailes knows what he wants to achieve with the piece. When we go off track, he’ll spend precious rehearsal time to explain (always with a tad bit of humour) the direction and nature of that particular part. Music isn’t just a bunch of notes or tunes! It’s a mix of emotion, passion, expression, style – we gotta’ achieve that each time.

On the competition night, we hoped to land ourselves in the top three. But before performing, we weren’t so sure – we were in a tense situation. Firstly, we didn’t have a proper warm up room, plus the weather was rainy and the temperature below 10 degrees. They rented a place for us to warm up in, but it was really risky because we had to walk out on the dark, slippery road with all our instruments. And with the drastic temperature change, the tuning was bound to go berserk (especially woodwinds). When getting organized in the squashy room, Mr. Wailes warned us “At this very moment, any of you might accidentally wreck your instruments if you’re not careful!”

We performed 3 repertoires that went on for 20 minutes: Starflight Overture by Rex Mitchell, Klarinette Concerto (Andante movement) by Mozart, and Overture Festivo by Shostakovich. I could barely hear myself in the theatre cause’ it is meant to project to the audience, and the heavy red curtains soaked up the sound on the stage. I probably didn’t play my best. But I hoped that as a whole, we sounded impressive enough; given that our pieces were all meant to be pretty showy. Haha.

We competed against 7 other school Symphony Orchestras. At the end of the night, we were all at the edge of our seats as they announced the top three. Winning first for Symphony Orchestra would be such an awesome achievement cause’ it’s the hardest one! So it went, third was Melbourne High School, second place was Ballarat High, and the first place went to… Blackburn High School!!! WAHOO! We were cheering, hugging and high fiving each other. It sure felt great. :D

It was a good experience. Music in school has given me all the opportunities in the world – to get to know new people, to hear all the orchestra instruments that are rarely taught in M’sia, to learn under dedicated and fun music teachers, and to make music with others on such a big scale. Really thank God for answering my prayer. A year ago I couldn’t imagine experiencing all this!

I thank God so much for giving me another memorable musical escapade. =)