This year’s strings ‘Youth Collab’ (Sunday, June 7) was an enjoyable experience, says conductor Richard Paull, for the players – student and adult – as well as the 60-70 strong audience.
“It was great to have a centralised strings-based event where both our adult Taupō Strings Group, Taupō Youth Strings Orchestra and other invited students can come together for one day to share in the experience of being in a strings orchestra.”
A combined orchestra performed a variety of pieces ranging from classical, traditional reels, and contemporary, including an opening ‘Fanfare’, followed by ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’, ‘The Masons Apron’, ‘Wexford Mist’, and concluding with ‘The 101’ which featured drums and keyboard provided by Martin Jung and Aaden Cho.
The 4pm concert in the Taupō-nui-a-Tia College hall followed a two-hour rehearsal.
The Taupo Youth Strings Orchestra and Taupo Strings Groups also performed their own sets, and a special violin trio featuring Intermediate and Hilltop students Pippa Walker, Ben Clark and Frankie Clarke also performed a tune.
“For the much younger students, this would have been their first experience ever playing in a strings orchestra, and their feedback was overwhelmingly positive,” says Paull.
“The violinists were particularly enthused with instruments they had not seen before until that day, such as the double cello and the vioka (double bass and viola).
“One of my aims is to have the Taupo Youth Strings Orchestra continue to develop and grow from its present numbers, which is where Youth Collab comes in, as this event is essentially a training field for the developing students not yet in the TYSO who may like to join this orchestra in the near future.”
Paull thanked Rowan Bolley and the TNT music department for hosting the event as well as the adult players and helpers who gave encouragement to the younger students they sat next to.
