By Tanya Steele
A little band that could have come home platinum after winning their division this month at a state level competition.
The Legends band from Healesville High School recently performed at the Victorian Schools Music Festival and received the platinum award for their 20-piece junior concert band.
The event draws over 10,000 students to compete annually and the students travelled to the Hawthorn Cultural Arts Centre to compete.
Music Coordinator at Healesville High School, Amanda Morrison said only two of the 20 students had performed at the festival before.
“They played phenomenally, they were super focused,” she said.
“We had a few nerves on the day and we listened to a few of the groups, then went to a warm-up room to ‘blow off’ some nerves before we went on to play.”
Michael Jongebloed, producer of the Victorian School Music Festival said 65 schools performed in the junior concert band division this year.
“The concert band division has 151 groups and just under 6,000 students,” he said.
The schools do not compete against each other, it’s the schools against the music they choose to perform.
“The two or three works they performed, they played at an outstanding level,” Mr Jongebloed.
The platinum award – which is the top award for the festival has had the high school buzzing with excitement after the event.
Ms Morrison said the students had worked really hard for it.
“There have been many students and staff giving us congratulations, which is great – it is nice to be getting that recognition,” she said.
A few months ago the students chose pieces and worked towards the performance in afterschool practice – one is compulsory and others were picked to display strengths of the band.
They performed three pieces total on the day and much of the preparation actually goes towards learning how to perform to the criteria set by the competition standards.
“When we’re preparing for it, we talk through the process of what actually happens at the festival and we get graded on absolutely everything,” Ms Morrison said.
The Legends group was comparatively small in their division – with 20 students against many other bands of up to 70 students and over.
“For a small group like ours, often there is only one person playing their part and so every single member of the band had to be very confident,” Ms Morrison said.
“These guys had to go above and beyond – they had to work together really well as a team,” she said.
The Legends played “Mar Y Cielo” by Jorge Vargas, “The Water is Wide” arranged by James Swearingen and “Dance of the Garden Gnomes” by Patrick Roszell.
The pieces were selected from a list that was available for the competition – and “The Water is Wide” was selected for contrast to display how well the group could play slowly and melodically.
“We only began learning that piece this term, two of the drummers actually learnt how to play mallet percussion and xylophone for the piece,” Ms Morrison said.
“Healesville for such a small group, chose repertoire that suited the ensemble and the students and played at an outstanding level,” Mr Jongebloed.
The band will now work their way up into another division and hope to compete at an intermediate level in the future.
Mr Jongebloed said many school music programs have been hurt by Covid and Healesville as a small country school can choose now to go up a level.
“It will depend on their numbers and every school maintains a certain level and number wise, recruitment and retention in the band will really drive where they go in the next few years,” he said.
“Last year, the our state competition was down by around 15 per cent in numbers,” he said.
Healesville has never competed an at intermediate level before and hopes to continue fundraising to be able to travel for other competitions.
“It’s always hard work getting there, but once we are there – it’s really a celebration of all the hard work we have put in, every time we perform,” Ms Morrison said.
The Legends will perform an encore delivery of their platinum win for the school on the week of 4 September and keep up their amazing work for future festivals.
