Senior School

Performing Arts

VIRTUAL ORCHESTRA PROJECT 

The Performing Arts Department are exciting to be preparing a performance of Russian Sailor’s Dance by Rimsky-Korsakov with students from the Kinross Wolaroi School Orchestra and Junior School String Orchestra.  Music will shortly be sent to relevant students, who are asked to video record their parts against a click track.  Ms Howarth will be spending many hours mixing and mastering the videos and we look forward to the finished result!

YEAR 12 PERFORMANCES

Our wonderful class of 2021 have missed out on many of the usual performance opportunities afforded to them in the lead up to their HSC. Please take a moment to listen to Lizzie Kwa, Matilda Hayes and Tully Ritter performing some of the HSC repertoire.  These recordings were taken from their HSC Trial Performance Examination.  We wish them all the very best in the coming months.

PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH LOCKDOWN

We would love to hear performances from students. Many students have pieces that have been performance ready for some time, but due the current health situation in NSW they may have not been able to perform them live.  We would like to share them with our school community. Please record the student performing their item (under 3 minutes) and send it to performingarts@kws.nsw.edu.au

YEAR 10 MUSIC: Australian Music 

Year 10 have been completing a unit on Australian Music.  As part of this course, they have been looking at Antartica, a piece of film music written by Nigel Westlake. In particular, students have been looking at how Westlake manipulates the concepts of music to depict the landscape of Antartica. Students then completed a task where they matched a short piece of video with pre-composed music, considering changes of mood, action and scenery.  Here is Shelly Hayes’ work.

INDIVIDUAL INSTRUMENTAL, SPEECH & DRAMA AND VOCAL LESSONS

Your child’s teacher will have made contact to organise individual lessons whilst in remote learning.  We strongly recommend that your child continues their lessons whilst we are operating remotely.  It not only continues to develop fundamental skills, but gives students’ body and brain a valuable workout, particularly at a time when they are deskbound for a significant time during the day. 

Please consider appropriate arrangements for supervision of your child during online learning and a safe space for your child to undertake lessons. 

During lockdown, please continue to encourage your child to maintain a regular practice routine.  This helps maintain some normality for students in their daily routines as well as keeping the momentum in preparation for transitioning back to onsite learning. This may include technical work, performance pieces and ensemble repertoire. It may be prudent to have a set goal or reward system to help sustain focus at this time! For younger students, performances can be sent to Mrs Sinclair for some feedback and enthusiastic encouragement.

CONTACT WITH INSTRUMENTAL AND VOCAL TUTORS

Please be considerate when communicating with our instrumental tutors. They too are working around scheduling, family, and technical constraints. It is an expectation that staff should only be contacted within normal working hours, Monday to Friday and your child’s lesson should also be scheduled within these hours.  Should you need to alter your child’s lesson time, please give your child’s tutor a minimum of 24 hours’ notice. 

AMEB EXAMINATIONS

A reminder that AMEB video exam entries are due by 11 October 2021.  Students who have elected to sit their AMEB exams via video entry should continue to refine their performances.  Should you have any queries regarding uploading your child’s examination, please contact either their instrumental teacher or our Instrumental Co-ordinator, Ms Katherine Howarth at kahowarth@kws.nsw.edu.au