Composed across February 2009 with the second movement being composed first and then movement one and
three following. The scoring didn't take place until May and June of 2009 with the manuscript score
noting "Fine 09 June 09, 5.00 pm". Engraving begun immediately to ensure preparation of parts for the
ensemble and preliminary rehearsals to take place in Mt Isa.
Commissioner
Mt Isa Community Orchestra, Queensland Music Festival and Education Queensland.
Context For Creation
Yvonne Moore is a dynamic instrumental teacher who garnered support for both the commission project and
for me to visit for what they called The Big Weekend. With many school students learning their
instruments via the School of the Air (across a 'school yard' of several hundreds of thousands of
kilometres) and many of the blue and white collar workers at the Mt Isa mines having musical backgrounds
the scene was set to have an event which would unite all parts of the community. The commission
assignment was to write a major work that would tell of Mt Isa both historically and culturally. The
first movement is called The Land, and is meant to be a union of both the magnificence of the landscape,
its value to the indigenous peoples and the power of the mines and the very earth itself. In the second
movement, History, my inclination was to produce something which reflected pastoral history and I use
the folk song Brisbane Ladies. The third movement, The Joyful People, is my endeavour to display the
local people and those involved in music making particularly for the happy and embracing folk they are.
The Yvonne had asked that I place a children's chorus in the finale and so I chose the folk song The
Drover's Dream as a theme for the final part of the whole work and attempted to use the orchestra to
display facets of that song as vividly as possible. I am very thankful for Yvonne Moore's insight,
determination and consideration through this whole project. See program note and Email messages for
further background information.
Premiere
Queensland Music Festival, The Big
Weekend Mt Isa,
2nd August 2009, Ralph Hultgren conducting.
There was a massive response to the event and the work itself. The articles below give evidence of the
local community engagement with the work and the project. The players reacted wonderfully to the work -
well, the more capable and mature players did. I had all ages involved with some players being community
members and some school children who learn their instruments through school of the air based in Mt Isa.
Those less developed players began with a solid fear in both the rehearsal environment and also the
challenge of the work's technical demands. As the weekend proceeded there were workshops to help the
less able instrumentalists (part of the scope of the whole project). I know of one governess who was
involved and was learning the cello a lesson at a time with her young charge ( a girl who turned 11
years old over the weekend). A we took a break during the Friday evening rehearsal the governess sat and
tried valiantly to deal with the music in front of her. I leant over the music stand and told her it
would be okay if she started by playing only the first note in each bar and then added the note on the
third beat and so on. She smiled timidly at the thought but I watched as her connection with the music
grew and her fear of being wrong ebbed away. See newspaper article, Mt Isa 2
above.
Reflections
This is a special work for me for a number of reasons. It was good to be able to write for full
orchestra and to have some very solid players to back up those who were still in the developmental phase
of their instrumental performance. I enjoyed the challenge of the program given for me for the work and
how I dealt with it. I am concerned that it will now 'sit' and not be heard again as I don't conduct and
orchestra so I can't program it for one of my performances.