You don’t often hear 80 milk bottles being shaken frantically in Hamer Hall near the climax of an evening full of music, but that’s exactly what happened last month at St Kilda Road’s annual Music Festival. Given the title of this year’s concert was ‘Music in Motion’, the frenetic activity was, in fact, rather apt.
The milk bottles, half-filled with water, evocatively created the sound of steamboats’ churning paddles for the Symphonic Band’s stirring rendition of Robert Smith’s ‘The Great Steamboat Race’, an immersive piece that recreates a famous race up the Mississippi in 1870 by two legendary steamboats, the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez.
Assistant Head of Music, Darcie Foley, enlisted the hands of 80 Pop Choir members to create the crucial percussive effect. ‘We were putting a lot of trust in their following my conducting and also not taking the bottle tops off and showering Hamer Hall with water!’ she says. ‘I was really impressed by their enthusiasm and the way they handled being surprise Symphonic Band percussionists – they did it for the first time in performance.’
In introducing the number, Student Leader of Jazz, Daniel, invited the audience to visualise the scene: ‘Will the ominous Natchez, represented by the low brass and woodwinds, maintain its reputation as the fastest on the river? Or will the Robert E. Lee, with it’s playful, calliope-inspired melody, be victorious?’
With 525 student musicians from Year 2 all the way up to Year 12 performing in a range of choirs, bands, ensembles and orchestras to an audience of over 1,500, the Festival was a big, bold, eclectic celebration of music and performance.
‘With ‘Music in Motion’ we aimed to explore the captivating relationship between music and movement,’ said Head of Music, Philip Walsh. ‘Dance, the movement of fingers or a bow on an instrument, unusual time signatures, phrases in the written score, and the subtle swaying of an audience member, all demonstrate how music moves us and how it is enhanced by movement.’
Reinforcing the motion theme, the audience was treated to some beautiful Spanish flamenco dancing with the Combined Guitar Ensembles’ number Ida y Vuelta, and some spectacular aerial acrobatics from Year 11 student Curtis as part of the Senior Choir’s performance of songs from 'West Side Story'.
As for the epic steamboat race up the Mississippi, the Robert E Lee was victorious.
