The Melbourne School Bands/Strings Festival is a two week program where school bands mainly from metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, as well as country Victoria and interstate, gather to perform, listen and participate in tutorials. The Festival has an education focus. All ensembles receive either a Gold, Silver, Bronze, Merit or Participation shield. The Melbourne School Band festival is the brain child of Barry Croll and Douglas Heywood who created the idea and event under the Music Junction Blackburn Banner in 1989 to support the on going development of music education in schools. The festival is currently produced and sponsored by Billy Hyde Music Foundation.
In 2008, the Festival's 20th anniversary, over 300 concert bands, jazz ensembles and string ensembles performed at the Robert Blackwood Concert Hall and School of Music Auditorium, Monash University. Since the inception of the festival in 1989 the number of students electing to learn an instrument through their school music program has increased substantially. The festival is now one of Australia's most prestigious musical events for school musicians.
The festival is designed to support and develop instrumental music education. Not only do students have the opportunity to perform at Australia's finest venues (acoustic-wise), but they receive adjudication from an outstanding panel of adjudicators.
The festival runs for two weeks until the Festival Finale on the last Saturday of August. The Finale showcases the most outstanding ensembles from the Festival and features the distribution of the awards.
Famous quotes containing the words school, bands and/or festival:
“School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them.”
—Ivan Illich (b. 1926)
“Nearly all the bands are mustered out of service; ours therefore is a novelty. We marched a few miles yesterday on a road where troops have not before marched. It was funny to see the children. I saw our boys running after the music in many a group of clean, bright-looking, excited little fellows.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)