Queensland Conservatorium: 2014 A Year in Review

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1 Introduction 2 Brass 4 Engagement 6 Jazz 8 Keyboard 10 Musical Theatre 12 Music Technology 14 New Music 16 Open Conservatorium 18 Visual Showcase 20 Opera and Voice 22 Orchestra 24 Pedagogy 26 Percussion 28 Popular Music Research and 30 Research Students 32 Strings 34 Winds

International, National & Local

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Welcome to QCGU Year in Review.

This is designed to present a small snapshot of the Queensland Conservatorium activities in 2014. It is by no means exhaustive. We hope it serves to shine light on some of the highlights of a year that included more than 250 performances encompassing aspects of our learning and teaching, research and engagement agendas.

This serves as a thank you to our partners and a memento of all that 2014 encompassed.

Enjoy, and see you in 2015!

Professor Scott Harrison Director, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University

CONTENTS

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Brass The Brass area was boosted with two new permanent appointments – Sarah Wilson (Trumpet) and Greg Aitken (Lower Brass).

Together with Deputy Director Peter Luff (Horn), this trio undertook a highly successful tour of Japan in October.

The award-winning horn school continued its 2013 successes with high profile performances in Brisbane and beyond under the distinguished leadership of Peter Luff and Ysolt Clark. Our horn graduates now occupy principal chairs in all Australian Symphony Orchestras, bar one. Our trumpets are looking forward to their 2015 tour to the United States.

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Engagement Students and staff have been engaged in extensive work beyond the South Bank and Gold Coast campuses. In the international arena, staff members have travelled to the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Malaysia, United States, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Brazil. A major feature of our international program involved the “Listening to the Thames” project in the heart of London.

We were delighted that two of our Higher Degree Research students, Phoebe Green and Alex Raineri, were awarded Stipendium Prizes at the 2014 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in August and our 2014 graduate Lily Hubbard was accepted into the Manhattan School of Music.

Closer to home, our students engaged in Opera on the Beach with Opera Australia in Coolangatta, and our world premiere opera production Floods toured to Ipswich, Buderim and Bundaberg.

Within our local precinct — in addition to SEED and Green Jam — our students were part of the American Music Club at QPAC. As part of the Brisbane Festival, a wide range of students worked at the GLNG Twilight Music Series. Our major connection with the Festival was as presenting partner for the Australian premiere of the Philip Glass opera, The Perfect American.

Nationally, our connections with Australian National Academy of Music strengthened further, with a number of students now graduating from our joint Master of Music program. Our musical theatre students presented their work in Sydney and Melbourne in November. Students across a range of programs were part of the now annual trip to Tennant Creek.

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Jazz The highlight in the Jazz calendar was the production of the ConArtists newest album, launched in October. Other highlights included the sell out performances by Queensland Conservatorium Alumni vocalists, Katie Noonan, Kristin Berardi, Elly Hoyt and Luara KarlsonCarp with the ConArtists in May. Our Head of Jazz, Steve Newcomb was musical director for the G20, and Louise Denson was awarded her Doctor of Musical Arts in July.

Engagement beyond South Bank included performances in Ipswich, the annual City Mall series, and Green Jam in association with QPAC.

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Keyboard Our Keyboard students enjoyed success in national and international competitions. Ayesha Gough, Alex Raneiri and Aaron Lui won a swag of awards between them. Our Kawai keyboard series continued to attract outstanding national and international performers including Roy Howat, Bernard Lanskey, Lisa Moore and a very special birthday performance for Pamela Page. In the first week of September, we played host to the Australian Duo Piano Festival ably curated by Jenni Flemming and Stephen Emmerson.

In 2015, we will welcome our first organ student for many years and it will be good to see the Owen Fletcher Organ in regular use again in the Basil Jones Orchestral Hall.

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Musical Theatre Musical Theatre commenced the year in its newly refurbished facilities. The inaugural season in the Burke Street Studio Theatre was I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change presented by the final year students. The other major production of the year was Into the Woods, directed by Kate Wilson, with UK-based Musical Director, Stuart Pedlar in the pit.

Other highlights included productions of Godspell, Oklahoma, Con2theCabaret (in association with the inaugural Queensland Cabaret Festival), performances in City Hall and the annual showcase tour to Sydney and Melbourne.

Visiting artists included John Bucchino, Neil Rutherford and Leontine Hass. Graduates from this, Queensland Conservatorium’s newest program, have featured in professional productions of The King and I, Once, Rolling Thunder Vietnam and Carrie the Musical.

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Music

TECHNOLOGY Music Technology played a role in developing new approaches to music making under the leadership of Andrew Brown, Toby Gifford and Matt Hitchcock. A particular focus of this work is the ever-changing use of digital technology, manifest in our iPad ensemble and in the use of two new digital pianos in the expert hands of Stephen Emmerson and Andrew Brown. iPads were also a feature in our production of Floods in September. The work in this space is aligned with a research agenda in which ideas about the role of live coding are explored, along with the provision of new techniques for algorithmic composition through the Smart Music Research Group.

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New Music One of the highlights in the New Music area was the world premiere production of Floods, profiled in the opera pages. Queensland Conservatorium also plays host to a number of ensembles in residence who bring new music to the institution. Foremost among these is Clocked Out who perform works at the cutting edge of music creation.

Our research students also play a major role in this space, particularly Phoebe Green and Alex Ranieri who received awards at the prestigious 2014 Darmstadt Summer Courses.

The main proponents of New Music are, of course, our composition staff and students. This area continued to drive our new music agenda with a number of world premieres – both here in Australia and internationally.

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OPEN Conservatorium The State Honours Ensemble Program attracted almost 1700 young performers across the state, culminating in an outstanding four days of activity in Brisbane in October. Students in this program worked with national and international conductors and performed in four near-capacity concerts in the Queensland Conservatorium Theatre.

Our weekly Young Conservatorium program continued to thrive, with activities for Young Beginners, Early Childhood and School-Aged students. This incorporated individual tuition and ensemble-based activities.

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W W E EI I V V E E R R N I N I R AR A E E Y Y AA

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OPERA& Queensland Conservatorium’s long tradition of fully-staged student operas continued with a mid-year production of Cunning Little Vixen, directed by Anna Sweeney AM, and conducted by Peter Luff. In September, four years of planning came to fruition with the world premiere of Floods, a new Australian work with scores by Queensland Conservatorium staff members (Gerard Brophy, Stephen Cronin, Kim Cunio and Gerardo Dirie) directed by Gregory Massingham and conducted by Roland Peelman.

This subsequently toured throughout regional Queensland.

The Lisa Gasteen National Opera School built on the success of previous years with a longer program and new guests including Robert Lloyd CBE. Other guests featuring in the term time opera school included Michael Lewis and Lynne Dawson.

Graduates from the opera program continue to grace the world stage. Recent successes include three students in the Jette Parker Young Artists program at the Royal Opera House (Samuel Johnson, Sam Sakker and Kiandra Howarth) and winner of the Mietta Song competition, Tabatha McFadyen.

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Orchestra Our Orchestral program featured in four performances on the concert platform this year, in addition to providing playing in the pit for the annual opera productions. Highlights included Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony, John Adam’s Atomic Symphony, alongside the famous RimskyKorsakov arrangement of Mussorgky’s Night on Bald Mountain. In the second season of the year, we paid tribute to the late Peter Sculthorpe, iconic Australian composer and Doctor of the University.

In the last concert of the year, we bid farewell to our long-serving resident maestro, Michael Morgan.

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Pedagogy Our Pedagogy programs, led by Gemma Carey, continued to prepare the next generation of teachers. Our postgraduate work in this area is particularly strong, as we provide the only training at this level. The voice area, under the leadership of Irene Bartlett and Ron Morris provides the state with a constant supply of high quality teachers of singing in all styles, while keyboard pedagogy is also one of the Queensland Conservatorium’s strengths — enhanced in no small part by the research agenda in this area.

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Percussion Our Percussion students, under the leadership of Vanessa Tomlinson, continued to surprise and delight with their performances in the concert hall and in the most unusual of locations. A highlight of the year was the performance of Varese Ionisation — a personal favourite of the current Director.

Percussion has been closely associated with the new music agenda, and presented works in collaboration with almost every other department in places such as the stairwells, the corridors and, on occasion, in the concert hall.

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Popular Music

The SEED project is now a permanent fixture in the performance calendar of the Bachelor of Popular Music, with hundreds attending performances each Friday evening for 10 weeks across winter on the greens of QPAC. Students of Popular Music also went to Nashville and Los Angeles for TAXI for the first time in 2014.

Under the leadership of Donna Weston, our permanent staff teaching into the program were bolstered by the appointment of Brendan Anthony and Caleb James. Visiting artists working with the students included Footstomp, who gave a day of workshops, along with Maghoo and songwriter Mark Sholtez.

Students from this program enjoyed exceptional success with Jared Porter winning the Tamworth Country Music Festival’s Starmaker, and Danny Harley (aka The Kite Street Tangle) voted number 19 on the Triple JJJ’ Hottest 100.

Up and coming star, Taylor Moss, is already recording in Nashville.

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RESEARCH

and research students

In association with the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, QCGU continued to build on its successes in Artistic Practice as Research, Music Technology, Music in Communities and Music Education and Training.

The latter earned a huge boost with the funding of Gemma Carey’s grant through the Office for Learning and Teaching on aspects of one-to-one pedagogy.

Under the leadership of Dan Bendrups, Queensland Conservatorium hosted the Australian Postgraduate Research Symposium, convened by the Queensland Conservatorium’s postgraduate student body in June. In October, PhD student Leah Coutts won the Griffith University 3 Minute Thesis competition, and progressed to the Trans-Tasman final. 2014 doctoral graduates included Dr Grant Collins, Dr Leah Barclay, Dr Jocelyn Wolfe and Dr Wendy Hargreaves.

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Strings With resident staff and visiting artists of the highest calibre, the string area continued to produce outstanding results in 2014. Under the leadership of Michele Walsh, our violinists continue to gain national recognition for their outstanding performances. Our cello and double bass schools also grew in 2014, and our viola students benefited from the teaching of our new adjunct fellow Caroline Henbest. A particular highlight was Brett Yang’s Sydney Symphony Fellowship win.

Further good news arrived in October, when we launched the Ena Williams Bursary, a $40,000 annual scholarship for female string and piano students. October also saw Eddie Chen win the annual Brisbane Club award and Graeme Jennings appear as a guest artist with the Australian String Quartet.

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Winds Our Wind department has continued to develop under the leadership of Eve Newsome, ably supported by Alexis Kenny and Diana Tolmie.

Our renowned oboe school is going from strength to strength, and the students of flute, clarinet, saxophone and bassoon have all enjoyed a fruitful year. Small ensembles have thrived in this space, and the contribution of this area to the large ensembles of the Queensland Conservatorium has not gone unnoticed. We were particularly pleased to be able to launch the Jani Haenke Wind Quartet as the result of a large bequest to the Queensland Conservatorium.

The saxophone orchestra continued its high public profile, and is in the midst of preparing for a major tour in 2015.

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Find out more: Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University 140 Grey Street South Bank Qld Australia 4101 General Enquiries +61 (07) 3735 6111 Connect with us on facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube at: griffith.edu.au/music conevents.com.au PHOTOGRAPHY BY:

and Lincoln Mackinnon Barkley Regional Arts

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