Hello everyone, we are very excited to announce a magical music workshop experience for our students in Term 3. Many of our community will have heard the beautiful sounds of the Federation Hand Bells, either at the Melbourne Museum or in community and festival performances. We are thrilled that our students will have the opportunity to expand their listening and music making skills with these unique instruments and have invited two of Australia’s top percussionists, Peter Neville and Steve Falk, to work with us in a series of workshops. Looking ahead to Term 2, we will start exploring tuned and untuned percussion in preparation for this wonderful experience with the bells which will culminate with a performance to share with our school community.

Meanwhile, we have continued with our singing ’en plein air’ as we prepare for our performances for Harmony Day. Singing out side has it’s challenges as there are so many other sounds and sights, which on the surface, distract us. Sometimes it’s a helicopter carving it’s sound through our voices, or we are part of a broader sound scape of birds and the distant voices of children playing. These are all familiar sound environments to our ears, but it’s how our singing interacts with the outdoor sound world that really ’tweaks’ our brains to attention. It reminds me of how Hannah is constantly looking at the way our environment around us informs our practice in the visual arts. Listening to our own sound and being aware of how people and nature fill our ears with a sound world we take for granted, gives us an entry point into improvisation.

We look forward to sharing our singing with you at the Harmony Day Assembly. Thank you in advance to Ben, Ruby and Sherwin for accompanying the song ’Hello to All the Children of the World’, and to Cleo, Karl, Aurelie, Ziyu and Sasha for accompanying ’Asalaam Aleikhum’… to Erin and Ruby for leading the singing parts, and to all the students for singing. Enjoy!

All the best for the next 2 weeks. Cheerio, Deb