From the 3rd – 11th of July in 2023, I had the pleasure of working alongside the Australian Youth Orchestra for their Winter Seasons concert held in Sydney & Canberra. The program featured an intensive week long program filled with rehearsals, sectionals and tutorials based around the Sydney metro area. For the week we rehearsed our concert repetoire which featured a collection of pieces composed by Nigel Westlake. These included ‘The Glass Soldier Suite’, ‘Beneath The Waves’ from Blueback and ‘Ngapa William Cooper’. Most excitingly, the performances of ‘Beneath the Waves’ and ‘Ngapa William Cooper’ would be the orchestral premieres of the two pieces with ‘Beneath the Waves’ featuring cello soilist Sharon Grigoryan and ‘Ngapa William Cooper’ featuring vocal soilists Lior and Lou Bennett.
A typical day in the program started with a Violin 1 tutorial at 10:00am-12:30pm in the Australian Performing Arts Grammar School. These tutorials were taken under the guidance of Madeline Easton, an incredible violinist and creative artist. Through these tutorials we learnt valuable skills and tips from Madeline and had the opportunity to go through our part as a section. It was great to see how refined our playing as a section had become after many of us had previously gone through the Autumn Season program in April.
After the tutorials we would head out to buy lunch before making our way to the ABC studio for a strings sectional at 2:00-4:30pm. These rehearsals were conducted under the baton of Fabian Russell, the principal conductor of ‘The Orchestra Project.’ These sections of the program allowed each part of the string section (Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Harp) to come together and test out the knowledge we had learnt and the sections we had worked on into a bigger group. Here, Fabian pointed out and guided us through passages which were not quite refined, allowing us to further enhance our sound as the string section.
After finishing sectionals, we would go out and buy dinner (usually Malatang). After eating we headed back to the ABC studios for a a tutti (whole orchestra) rehearsal from 7-9:30pm. Although the first few tutti rehearsals were conducted by Fabian, towards the end of the week they were taken by Nigel Westlake himself, as he would be conducting us on the nights of the concerts. Nigel is an incredibly talented Australian composer, conductor and musician who has composed music for movies such as movies such as Babe, Blueback and Paper Planes. The tutti rehearsals were always the last rehearsals of the day, (until later in the week when we had multiple tutti rehearsals in a day). They were the final piece in the puzzel where each section in the orchestra had spent the first parts of the day individually workshopping in their instrumental groups and sections and now were coming together to rehearse as a whole orchestra. During the last two tutti rehearsals of the day we were joined by the soloists Sharon, Lior and Lou. When we first ran through the pieces with the soloists it was breathtaking as finally we had the full orchestration for the performance. These sections of the day were my favourite as the orchestra would make an incredibly professional and refined sound after working hard all day on the pieces. It really felt like all the hard work paid off.
Finally, at the end of the week we performed our repertoire in two concerts. The first concert took place on the 9th of July at the ANU Llewellyn Hall in Canberra. Before shortly heading back to Sydney and back to our accomodations. The second concert took place the next day on the 10th of July at the Sydney Opera House. Both concerts were a huge success and received a massive round of applause.
Playing alongside the AYO was definitely a momentous expereince in my musical career and was an exciting opportunity being able to perform newly comissioned works being heard for the first time. Throughout the program I met many new friends and was able to meet some of my old friends from previous AYO programs. I gained a lot of experience playing alongside musicians my age and would love to continue working with other musicians around Australia going into the future. The AYO Winter Season was definitely a highlight of my musical career.
The program to the concert can be found through this link :
