Armidale's Rich Musical Scene

I'm always amazed at how a little town, population c. 25,000, a long way from a major city can develop a rich musical culture. But last night just added to the amazement.

Musica Viva Australia is a national organisation bringing leading musicians to Australia or enabling prominent local classical entertainers to penetrate the 'bush'. And yesterday I was privileged to witness two excellent performers playing in Armidale's Town Hall sponsored by Musica Viva and our own New England Conservatorium. Yes, Armidale also has a music conservatorium!

In some respects it was a bizarre concert. Karin Schaupp and Umberto Clerici performed a series of 'songs', but neither of them was a singer! Karin played a Guitar and Umberto a Cello! Have you ever heard of any compositions for that combination of instruments? Both were young performers and Karin is hailed by German press as "so perfect, so complete ...". Umberto started playing the Cello at 5 years old and debuted in Japan aged 17 playing Haydn's D Major cello concerto! Umberto has since played with the likes of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, Philharmonia Wein, in Carnegie Hall in New York, and so on. Here they are together sitting on a railway track somewhere unknown!

What they did for the concert was remarkable. They took a series of mostly well known works and rewrote them for their two instruments. These were the works:

No words were sung, not that the Mendelssohn had any words to start with, and they let their instruments do the singing. And their playing was brilliant. I've heard some wonderful cellists in my time, including on one occasion the famous Mstislav Rostropovich, possibly the most famous cellist of the 20th century. I've had some wonderful experiences in my lifetime and one was to sit on a staircase in a house at Rothbury in the UK's Northumberland with Rostropovich playing his instrument 3 meters in front of me!! He'd played at a concert in Newcastle, which I'd attended, and was then invited to a select party in the countryside about 60 km away! And somehow I got an invitation. I was about 23 years old at the time. He gave a 30 minute recital from memory to me and my hosts.

Well, I can judge when an instrument is well played and last night Umberto was absolutely brilliant - as was Karin's own performance. Some of the music was ferociously difficult but handled with aplomb. And the full house in the Town Hall was enchanted. They brought the house down so to speak. I have one last observation. Karin is German and Umberto, unsurprisingly, Italian. Guess where they're living now! Karin works in Brisbane and Umberto is Principal Cello with the Sydney symphony orchestra.

In the first half May, Armidale will hold its annual Bach Festival - entitled this year 'Bach to the Future'. It will feature 10 separate events over 4 days as shown below. Does anywhere else in the world stage such an event ... even in Germany?

 We're very lucky to have such a rich cultural life in this town ... something artistic and creative always going on.

AS

More Serious Stuff

In addition to the cultural and social events I've just mentioned, I had two very serious and important invitations to major economic / technological / quasi-political engagements connected with my abiding interest in local economic development in high-technology futures.

First came the formal opening of TAFE's digital hub. TAFE stands for technical and further education often involving formal schooling for tradesmen such as electricians carpenters and plumbers. But TAFE, like universities and the school sector, is undergoing a rapid transformation in educational delivery in the light of burgeoning ICT. In NSW, the TAFE sector made a fundamental decision a few years back to deliver increasing content on-line rather than in a class-room. And it chose Armidale as the location to develop both the platform and its content. That's because this town has been a long-time world leader in on-line education and has many skilled practitioners. Well, the digital hub here has been developed and that was opened ceremoniously before a large crowd a week or so ago. The heavies on the stage so to speak included our local member of state parliament, Adam Marshall, and mayor Simon Murray. I've a lot of time for Adam who is well-educated, young, energetic and future focused. In the opening, Adam and Simon played a game on a screen using VR and AI (virtual reality and artificial intelligence) which really roused those present!

This digital hub will mean the in-migration to Armidale of many people with the great skills needed to establish on-line education and I can see the material produced having markets across all Australian and states and internationally. Rural development these days is no longer about serving local markets but also focusing on national and international markets.

Here's the digital hub with all its computer equipment, servers, access to cloud content and so on, along with a poster advertising the benefits of TAFE digital.

There were lots of speeches by various head honchos watched by a surprisingly large crowd

Screens also displayed content as they talked.

And we also saw on-screen the digital game played using VR / AI performed by Alan and Simon shown here with their control gadgets.

It was an interesting morning!

So, too, was my other 'political' engagement for which I've - perhaps mercifully for you - got no photos. Last Wednesday I flew down to Canberra at the invitation of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation (SCRDD) to be part of an Expert Panel advising them. Our discussions between the members of parliament and the panel of which I was a member went on for about 150 minutes. It went out on air live ad every word spoken will be reported in Hansard. Yes, Australia has a Hansard system just like the UK parliament. 

Let's just say now that the discussion was energetic, sometimes critical, informative for both parties, and potentially valuable in terms of outcomes. Regional development is desperately wanted across much of rural Australia and hopefully our work will translate into a better understanding of what Parliament can realistically do to accelerate such development in a cost-effective way. All members of the Panel, whom I personally know from attending conferences and memberships of learned societies, made excellent contributions in my opinion. It was literally a flying visit because I made it home the following day!

So, to reiterate earlier comments on various blog posts, retirement these days can be full of energy and ability to contribute to the future of society. Thinking of this reminds me that 9 days from now I'll be on a one-day visit to Sydney for another technological extravaganza. I've been invited by Amazon to a high-technology session in the morning followed lunch with a cabinet minister. The downward flight is at 6.30 am and I'm home just after 8 pm. It looks like my frequent flyer points will reach about 200,000 shortly!

AS

Autumn Festival 2018

Another annual event held locally is Armidale's Autumn Festival. Its predominant art-from is music and I'll focus mainly on that aspect. Two key features of the Festival's  music calendar are the breakfast with the band held in one of the creeklands' many parks. We took our usual trip down to the breakfast of bacon, eggs, omelette etc. and sat close to the Armidale City Band as it performed beautifully lots of traditional tunes and songs. I'll start, however, with our food and breakfast. Here's my plate.

And I'm sure you'll agree that the surroundings are very pleasant. By the way, even in Autumn the temperature at breakfast time is often about 17 C - nice and warm to eat outside.

Here's the local Lions Club serving a queue of would-be breakfast eaters.

And here's the band wearing their smart uniforms. They're serious musicians and have their own band HQ nearby.

The Festival's second great musical event is the massed pipe bands who come from as far as 200 to 300 km away. Here I focus on their gathering in the Mall on Saturday morning observed by a sizeable crowd. This view shows them all dressed in their kilts and other elements of uniform in front of the attractive old courthouse - now being converted into a museum.

Getting ready to play a series of traditional highland melodies, which I've heard all over Scotland. The events I attended there included the Edinburgh Festival and the Highland Games in Portree on the Isle of Skye - among many other occasions.

 
The band-master in exotic regalia.

Ready to go!

 

As you can see from these drummers, they're not all local. Moree is 267 km away and Tamworth is 110 km.

Back view of the pipers in front of the post office.

Alas, however, I have no photos of the concert stage in the creeklands where the previous evening I heard all manner of musical performances. My camera's battery gave out and when I looked for my mobile phone I found I'd left it at home. Let's just say that there was a strong quartet and other groups performing folk music. One group performed a traditional Irish song which I'm sure I heard one evening in a pub in Limerick over 50 years ago ... one I found out later to be owned or managed by the IRA! The Festival is, however, much more than just music. There's a large street parade, lots of fairground rides for the kids, a foody's dream in the form of many stalls serving fayre from all over the planet, and amazingly a criterium of cyclists whizzing on their bikes around the city centre. At least I've a few photos of the cyclists and the fairground. For example' here's Armidale's answer to the London Eye.

And the cyclists had a task ahead of them given that the criterium was scheduled over about 4 hours.

AS

A Quiet March?

 After our exciting and rewarding trip to the United States for Flynn's 5th birthday celebrations I was looking forward to a quiet and reflective month back home.

I couldn't have been more wrong! Events came fast and furious over the course of March, but fortunately I had a wide array of experiences, some aesthetic, some political, and others celebratory. This and the next posts will focus briefly on these experiences, and I think they show that active retirement can be a great pleasure as well as challenging and even help advance the well-being of the region where I live and indeed the nation!

First, however, I'll start with a beautiful reflective moment. I've taken to sometimes long early morning walks around Armidale and most of the time the skies are either foggy or perhaps subdued. A week or so ago, though, I walked at sunrise and was treated to wonderful illumination of the thin clouds hanging around. So I'll whet your appetites with some cloudscapes which were taken from the parkland that runs through the centre of our city.

Now that I have you in an artistic frame or mind, I'll focus on an annual art event that is held in nearby Uralla and run by that town's Rotary club. It's an exhibition of paintings produced by mainly local and regional artists and many are high quality in design and execution. In addition, works by local school-children are also displayed and the number of exhibits runs into the hundreds. Our Rotary club (Armidale North) supports our Uralla brethren and annually holds an evening dinner sitting amidst the paintings after leisurely strolling through exhibits.

Most of the pictures were on sale and whilst there for our dinner I looked out a work that Dot had bought during an earlier visit at the exhibition's launch. Here it is and the price tag was A$ 400 (or c. 225 GBP at current exchange rate:

It's now hanging on our dining room wall alongside 12 other paintings. We're fast running out of wall space!

The next three artistic events were held simultaneously at the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM), but were quite different in kind. NERAM is possibly Australia's best art gallery outside of the large capital cities. A well-designed and specially constructed museum, which I helped crowd-fund perhaps 30 or so years ago, is home to the Hinton Collection bequeathed by one of Australia's foremost art collectors. It focuses especially on early colonial art-works, some of which are nationally famous and even featured on postage stamps. NERAM decided to feature this collection recently, whereas only a few of its numerous works are on display at any one time and Dot and wanted to see the mass display. Have a look at the wealth of the collection!

Many other exhibits were also on display, a few of which I've selected here, especially those depicting the terrors of war - given that 2018 marks the centenary of one of the most terrible wars ever:

Another part of the display jarred a little as it showed pictures of cacti growing in the Arizona desert!

And the final event that evening was the launch of Terry Cooke's new book on photographs of New England. I've known Terry for years and was, as Head of School on two occasions formally his boss. On this occasion he collected photos from a host of private individuals, many of whom formerly worked at the University of New England and even in my own department. The photos are beautiful, nicely presented, and provide a lovely cross-section of out New England landscape. As before, the volume was crowd-funded and I contributed to that. I also ordered three copies - one for Dot and me, which was signed by all of the contributors, and one each for Emily and Rebecca. If any of my readers would like to receive a copy, that can be arranged for a small sum.

The photos included in Terry's collection were also on display in NERAM, as shown here and Terry - also shown - was hard pressed all evening hosting the event, making speeches, and chatting up the enormous crowd of well-wishers.

The final picture shows the book's cover - a marvellous image of our beautiful region of mountains and gorges.

AS