Music Matters

Another huge term of Music has come and gone. It was only 9 weeks but we have certainly crammed a lot in.

Victorian School Music Festival

After our return from the Senior Tour of Queensland, attention quickly focussed on our repertoire for the Victorian School Bands Festival. Students worked diligently in rehearsals, sectionals and practice routines at home, with all their hard work paying off. String Orchestra were awarded a Platinum Award, Wind Symphony a Gold, and Concert Band, Senior Jazz and Junior Jazz all receiving Silver Awards. Congratulations to all students involved. Your playing has shown huge improvements over the year and you can all be very proud of your results.

SPRING CONCERT

The Spring Concert gave all our ensembles the opportunity to show off their hard work to a sold out audience in the Performance Centre. All ensembles produced outstanding performances and it was wonderful for the audience to hear our Platinum winning String Orchestra in the flesh. The night concluded with a massed item with Soundworks, Concert Band and Wind Symphony all on stage to make a 100 piece band. They played I’m A Believer as played by Smash Mouth from the Shrek soundtrack.

VSMF WIND SYMPHONY

Just one week before the spring music concert, Wind Symphony students performed at the Victorian School Music Festival on the 2nd of September 2025. This educational experience allowed the students to display their many hours of practicing and rehearsing to an audience of fellow musicians and adjudicators, including Chief Adjudicator, Dr. Sarah McKoin. Directed by Nicholas Dean, Wind Symphony performed the Latin groove of Rumba De La Tumba by JaRod Hall, the soft and expressive Heaven’s Light by Steven Reineke and arranged by Rob Romeyn and finally the assertive, percussion prominent piece with Celtic influences, Quad City Stomp by Michael Sweeney. Following their performance, the adjudicator, McKoin, joined the students onstage to help enhance their performance of Rumba De La Tumba with helpful advice to play with more energy and intention. VSMF is an opportunity for students to not only perform for an award but also improve their playing through a small, individualised workshop that can draw attention to areas of growth for the next year. However, a gold award isn’t a bad addition either, as the DSC Wind Symphony were presented gold for their superb technical playing and performance. Congrats!

Sienna Margarejo

Musical Futures – Soul Sonics Found Sound Workshop.

On Thursday 28th August, 24 lucky students got to experience a fun workshop run by Musical Futures. It was called Soul Sonics Found Sound and it involved the students recording their own sounds around the school, then putting them into Music software called Ableton and creating their own beats with their own unique sounds. The students were engaged for the three hour session and it was amazing to see how quickly they were able to navigate the Ableton launchpad to create their beats. Well done to all the students involved.

Nick Dean

Music Coordinator