Feel free to watch the chapter report video or read the transcript below:
Hello everybody, greetings from the Victorian Chapter of ANATS. We’ve had a wonderful start to our program for 2014 with our Kickstart event just held last week. We had our Certificates of Recognition, which we were very happy to present to Brian Hansford and Kate Sadler in recognition of their wonderful careers, both in the teaching and performing areas. The afternoon was fantastic with a beautiful lunch. We all just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves but the very good part of that day was to have Judy Bellingham with us from New Zealand, presenting her warmup programme. Everybody really enjoyed that. So that was a good way to get us all rolling for the year.
Our next event will be our VCE day which is usually very well attended. This year we will focus on the new classical syllabus and try and breathe some life into the vocalise section because, as you know, that’s hard for students to interpret and show their personalities and also the musicality, they find that quite a challenge. The contemporary syllabus will also be covered on that day.
The in July we will have our Performertunity which is a great social night where teachers can come and network with each other, students can present works that they are just getting ready for concerts and exams and all the programs that they’re working on during the year, including the VCE. Some students may not have come to the VCE day and we give them an opportunity to present their work and see how it is improving, get a private ‘crit’ from their teacher, but just to see how it goes on a general audience because the VCE is a performance exam after all.
Our big event of the year, which we’re very excited about, is that we are having Mark Meylan come out from London, the wonderful music theatre guru. He will be with us Friday 29th, Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st August. At that event we will have musical directors, agents, professional performers, students being workshopped – lots of discussions about every possible aspect of the music theatre voice. This includes how to look after it because in music theatre the voices are at great risk, due to the rigors of eight shows a week.
So basically, that’s what we’ll be at up until August of this year in Victoria. We’re hoping that you’ll put that date in your diaries, that you’ll consider coming to Victoria to join us for a great weekend. We’ll be having our AGM on that weekend, as well as there’ll be a Face to Face meeting with the National Councillors. If you want to come and talk to us all, we’ll be there!
So thank you everybody, I hope you’ve got off to a good start with this year’s teaching and I hope that this year is going to be a memorable one for ANATS in general.
Thank you very much. Goodbye.
Yours in music CONSTANCE COWARD - LEMKE and the Victorian Committee
