Sharing Food & Music Makes Sunraysia Shine

Music and food make great mates, their charismatic combination creates the perfect context for friendships to flourish and where there’s one you will invariably find the other. From Vocal Noshes to music camps and choirs, there is nothing like a spot of music-making to work up an appetite and a gathering of like minded people chatting over a plateful of food after a session of singing or playing is a beautiful thing.

As Community Music Victoria is all about using music to facilitate connections and develop community networks we were very excited to learn from our Growing Community Music Murray Mallee team about what the good folks from Food Next Door Coop and Out of the Box Sunraysia are doing. Work that feels aligned with the values of our own organisation, and to hear about how everybody’s paths came to cross at the end of November.

Food Next Door Coop is a social enterprise scheme connecting newly arrived migrants with existing land owners who have soil space to share, and with vacant or under-utilised farmland in regional and rural areas of Victoria’s North West. It is a model that fosters inclusivity and generates the sharing of ideas in a literal cross-pollination of knowledge and culture, uniting people from diverse backgrounds with members of their new communities and providing them access to land and a way for them to support themselves on arrival in their new country, using farming practices from back home. Creating an avenue to a sustainable source of income and independence helps people to settle  and strengthens community cohesion, while working the land in this way increases the number of small scale farms using sustainable practices beneficial to soil regeneration. The outcome is high quality, organic produce and a healthier landscape, both literally and figuratively, from the grass roots up.

Beats and birthday cake at Out of the Box’s fifth birthday.
Photo credits: Out of the Box Sunraysia

Out of the Box offers local delivery of produce grown in the Sunraysia area using regenerative, organic farming practices and works closely with the Food Next Door Coop as a distribution outlet for their land sharing scheme. Bringing together customers, farmers, volunteers, and landholders, the onus is on keeping food miles down – everything is grown within a 150 kilometre radius of the city – and the boxes are sold on a subscription basis with a lucky dip of produce each week using prices set by the growers. It’s a beautiful way to develop and sustain the community, feeding the people of the township and enriching local community connections by bringing people together and strengthening the network, much in the same way as the community music groups listed on the CMVic database.

And, like music, food grown and shared within the community is not only nurturing, bringing people together at the source, it has a flow on effect. Events like farmers markets create avenues for the sharing and development of ideas and values and offer a springboard for friendships and tighter, healthier, more connected communities. They also provide wonderful performance spaces and opportunities for community choirs and music groups to share their work and spread the joy.

Drumming with Catherine Threlfall. Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

On November 26th 2022, Out of the Box Sunraysia celebrated its fifth birthday with an extravaganza of music, food and wine that was provided, made and shared by members of the community, including the CMVic Growing Community Music family. Catherine Threlfall led a drumming circle with people of all ages joining in and playing an assortment of percussion including djembes, triangles, and tambourines; there was a band with ukulele and fiddle players and dancing from the Barkindji Dancers, all accompanied by a sumptuous community feast made, of course, from locally sourced foods: Merbein Mushrooms and lentils, beetroot sourdough and even an orange almond birthday cake made with beautiful fresh navel oranges from the region. 

Click here to watch a beautiful clip of the afternoons activities and listen to a moving speech made by Grant Hyam who runs Out of the Box in which he explains what being a part of it has brought to his life.

So if you are beginning the new year full of intentions to live well, joining a community music group or choir is a wonderful way to tick this box straight off the bat. A list of singing and music making opportunities can be accessed for free on the CMVic website. And if you are fortunate enough to live within coo-ee of Sunraysia and the Mallee, exploring the delicious work of the Out of the Box and Food Next Door Coop communities may support the turning over of any new leaves and lead to fresh growth and exciting opportunities as we take on 2023, together. 

‘Off the Chai’ Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

‘A Shared Affair’ Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

Written by Deb Carveth, CMVic Copy Editor, in collaboration with Kylie Livingstone, CMVic Growing Community Music Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia, Mallee

Video Credit: Luke Gange, Gange Productions. Photo Credits: Out of the Box Sunraysia.

Squeezing out the Zest! The Music Makers adding flavour to the Murray Mallee

“We are quite isolated in terms of where we sit within Victoria. Given that we are a really diverse community, we punch well above our weight in terms of the people we have involved in performing arts and community music and I feel that we’re really just under the radar.” So says Kylie Livingston, Community Music Victoria’s Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia and the Mallee, an exciting role created through the Growing Community Music Project (GCM) to support and nurture a network of community music-making practitioners and participants, living in this north-westerly corner of Victoria.

It’s a region well known for its fruit and wine, a number of annual music and arts festivals, and its picturesque location along the banks of the mighty Murray River.  Kylie is keen to contribute to the riches of the existing cultural framework by championing the role of community music and is collaborating with other like-minded people to create inclusive and participatory music making opportunities that further support the health and wellbeing of this Victorian community. 

Kylie’s hope is that her role will support the evolution of a self-sustaining network for Sunraysia, Mildura, and the Mallee that is inclusive, eclectic, and open

For the past three years, Kylie has been president of the committee for Electric Light Theatre, an amateur inclusive theatre company for youth based in Mildura. Each year, ELT stages a Variety Show, a celebration of music and performance art involving up to 100 kids from a broad range of backgrounds.  As an experienced facilitator who loves connecting people, Kylie has been quick to get the ball rolling since joining the Community Music Victoria (CMVic) team six months ago, creating events and workshops that support community music leaders to develop their skills, re-energise and reactivate their practice and, in doing so, draw more people into a network of local music-makers. 

”Over the last couple of years, I think community groups have really struggled and floundered and might not feel they have the skills or the energy to support themselves, or to continue and flourish, and that networking aspect is really important. The feedback we are receiving is that people are unsure where to go to find out about what’s on.  Everyone is relying on Facebook and that’s a bit hit and miss.  Even though people may have numerous informal contacts, connecting and networking for the benefit and support of everyone can feel really hard.”

To overcome the seemingly false sense of security fed us all by Facebook, Kylie is encouraging people to utilise the What’s On Mildura website as an alternative, free and consistent approach to marketing local community music-making events and opportunities in the area.

Kylie’s hope is that her role will support the evolution of a self-sustaining network for Sunraysia, Mildura and the Mallee that is inclusive, eclectic and open, and which continues to grow after CMVic’s immediate involvement in the region ends; a network where people feel stronger together, sharing and fostering a culture of inclusion that acknowledges and meets individual needs so that everyone can feel safe and welcome to participate without barriers or judgement.

“This is a very multicultural community, we have a big number of First Nations people and refugees from various regions and over the last ten years the area has become far more ethnically diverse, however we don’t tend to see that diversity represented in our audiences and participants.” 

Kylie is supported in her role by a dedicated local action team of community music activists who each take time out of their busy lives to act as consultants for GCM. “There’s lively conversation at 7:30am on a Monday morning each month”, Kylie laughs. This early bird time slot is a testimony to the conviction and passion shared by the group who willingly swap breakfast for brainstorming.  

“We’ve got a music therapist who is very involved in community music, a person who also works in disability, a music teacher in a primary school, a community place maker who is a First Nations woman which is great, and a member of Mildura Strings, who is really fantastic also.  As well as this core group, I’ve spent lots of time having discussions with community music leaders and participants around the region. This means that we’ve been able to hit the ground running as we have contacts through our connections back into the community, who are also advocates for GCM and CMVic.”

An excellent example of this took place on a chilly, clear Saturday, back in the middle of June. In collaboration with Mildura Rural City Council, Mildura Riverfront, and members of the local action group, Kylie facilitated ‘Winter Solstice’, a midwinter celebration for the community with opportunities to enjoy music and art along the riverfront in Mildura. 

Waking up to a beautiful, sunny morning following days of clouds and rain, Kylie took the opportunity to maximise the good weather feels of the day with one final push of publicity to everyone out enjoying the sunshine. It paid off and Kylie estimates that somewhere between 500 and 700 people attended the Winter Solstice, later that evening.

“We wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. There were a lot of people working together to make the night a success, including volunteers from the community and local organisations. There was a Drum Circle with Catherine Threlfall, and a mix of groups from the community. Sunraysed Voices performed and we also had Sunraysia Irish Dancers and a mix of buskers and professionals. There was Art with Missy who ran craft activities with the kids, there were fire twirlers and a smoking ceremony at the beginning which got everything started, including a big campfire. It was great to see so many age groups represented and probably different demographics as well.” 

Over the course of the evening the Lions Club cooked up 400 sausages and the chef from the Sunraysia Mallee Ethnic Communities Council’s food relief program ladled out 500 serves of soup!

Kylie says, “the fact we got that many people along on such a dark winter’s night shows that there is a real interest and need for participatory music and activity in our community. There was a real sense of community and connection.”

To stay informed about forthcoming events and networking opportunities for music-makers in Mildura, Sunraysia and the Mallee, join the Murray Mallee Music Makers Facebook Page or drop a line to Kylie at CMVic and say hello!

Article by Deb Carveth, CMVic Copy Editor, with Kylie Livingston, CMVic Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia and the Mallee; photo credits: Mildura Rural City Council and Mildura Riverfront. A big thanks to everyone!

GCM in Mildura, Sunraysia, Mallee is supported by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and the Department of Social Services Information Linkages and Capacity Social and Community Participation Stream.

CresFest: The New Folk & Roots Music & Dance Festival Putting Creswick on the Map

“There’s music everywhere!” says Judy Turner, convenor of the inaugural CresFest taking place between April 1-3.  For two days, the township of Creswick is throwing open its arms and its doors and inviting visitors to savour two of life’s transformative pleasures: music and dance. CresFest will celebrate the return of live music and performance while showcasing the beauty of Creswick’s historic architecture, its pubs, cafes and public spaces and the great beauty of the Central Victorian landscape. 

Judy’s desire to entice visitors to Creswick arose from her feeling it was underused, underknown and underappreciated with a plethora of lovely buildings just waiting for someone to bring a festival to town, and to share the talents and spirit of the local community with a broader audience. Drawing on a lifetime’s experience of coordinating festivals, fundraisers and cultural events for a broad range of audiences, Judy decided it was time to drop a big old pin and mark Creswick out on the map.

“People tend to dash through Creswick on their way to somewhere else and we want it to be a bit more known”, says Judy. “The Goldfields region is a beautiful place to come and explore, people can stay in Ballarat, Daylesford or Clunes and be here for the festival in fifteen minutes. It’s a beautiful part of the world to visit and CresFest is happening at a beautiful time of the year.”

Picture source: http://www.cresfest.com.au

A festival committee was formed of like-minded locals from Creswick Folk Club, the Neighbourhood Centre, Leavers Wine bar where open mic nights have run for many years, and the Creswick Theatre Company. Together, they have fought for funding and been shaping the show, growing it from the ground up for many, many months. CresFest now has an enviable program which has grown to include 360 musicians.

In addition to a phenomenal line up of headline acts including Emma Donovan and The Putbacks, Eric Bogle Trio, The Maes, Lucy Wise, Fiona Ross, Kee’ahn and oodles of others, CresFest offers a whole other program – the Armband Program – filled with an exciting range of opportunities for community participation. 

Festival goers can sing along with the Creswick Chorus led by Stella Savvy, strum and hum in the Creswick Ukestra led by Jen Hawley, strike out with Strat and Lyndal’s street band, and the Creswick Brass Band or be blown away by a Bollywood Dance ensemble. In addition to all of this and more, CresFest will include a series of live theatre shows called ‘Stories of Us’, funded by Festivals Australia, interspersed with short films in which music plays a key role. 

A kids’ choir has been created with funding from a local family and open mics will be running all weekend, some hosted by the alumni of Youthrive, a statewide group based in Creswick working to support kids from rural areas in supporting their education and bringing their skills back home. For lovers of flips, tricks and ollies there is a YMCA skate competition included in Sunday’s program.

The festival’s ticketing model gives punters the choice of buying a pass for all of the activities taking place in and around the town as part of the Armband Program, with an additional ticket required for access into the Town Hall where the headline acts will be playing across the weekend, offering what Judy calls ‘two levels of commitment’.

“There’s also heaps of free stuff” Judy says, “for people passing through or wanting to dip their toe in the water. The famous Creswick market will be home to an outdoor stage which in turn will host Saturday Breakfast from Ballarat ABC in a first live OB from Creswick.”

In addition to putting Creswick on the map, the committee hopes CresFest will increase the role and prevalence of shared participatory music making and performance for people of all ages within the Creswick community as well as communities from the surrounding small towns who have been brought into the festival fold. 

As Judy says, “that idea that people love getting together to sing, play and perform has been at the heart of what I’ve been doing all my life.” 

Planning this event has taken nerves of steel, and CresFest appears to have struck lucky in being able to proceed in a window of opportunity when other regional town-based festivals held earlier in the year had to be cancelled. As Judy says, “everything is fraught when you’re surrounded by uncertainty, particularly when it’s the first time doing something”. Undeterred, Judy has been driven on by holding in mind the sheer joy that making music and performing with others can bring, a bug she caught back in the 70s when she began performing at folk festivals:

“For me, it is really all about amateur music and the power of performance. I just love the atmosphere and the chance to sit down and play and play and play until I can’t play anymore, and I like to provide that for other people.”

The inclusive and collaborative culture of CresFest extends beyond the music and dance. Local businesses have provided backing and volunteers of all ages have been drafted from across the community with plenty more still needed. 

“We have a terrific team of people on the job, a mix of younger professionals and older volunteers, and it has worked really well and everyone is doing a terrific job. If anyone would like to be involved we could do with more stage managers, front of house people, we need people to serve the food in the artists’ green room, we need trouble shooters who can be runners, we need gofers, and before that we need people to put up posters!” 

CresFest sounds an incredible way to spend a weekend. For ticket bookings and information about how to participate in the festival – become a CresFest volunteer, put up posters or offer a billet to a visiting act – click here, and and be sure to try and get yourself and everyone you know there.

CresFest: April 1-3, 2022. Creswick is just 1.5 hours’ drive from Melbourne, between Daylesford and Ballarat. It is accessible via V/Line on the Maryborough route. For more information visit http://www.vline.com.au or call 1800 800 007

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria with Judy Turner

Good Vibrations: How the infectious energy of John Lane makes life feel better

All my training has been on the job and I have learnt it by doing it… I always loved singing and I loved acting and I liked being the centre of attention, I guess, whether it was in music or theatre.” This love of the limelight may have been a starting point, but John Lane has spent his entire working life bringing others into the frame to experience the joy of participation that has perpetuated his own effervescent, irrepressible energy and enthusiasm for community arts practice.

“Being in musical vibration together with others is the closest I get to being really spiritual, that’s my spiritual observance, it’s why I like going to the footy; if your team wins you get to sing with 20,000 people! This world with all this pain and sorrow also has all this beauty and one way of plugging into that, viscerally, is to be vibrating in harmony together.”

Having learned piano as a child, John branched out into trumpet and the French horn at secondary school before teaching himself to play the guitar, inspired by the likes of Neil Young and Bob Dylan. “I took every opportunity I could to be a part of productions, both at school and university where I was very much into musical theatre.” 

After three years of medical school, John decided to take a gap year to try and get theatre out of his system. This was a plan destined never to work. He was offered a job in Brisbane and spent three immersive years touring political musical comedy shows with the Popular Theatre Troupe, also organising and running drama workshops and improvisations based on what he had been doing in student theatre workshops, back in Melbourne. John found he couldn’t stop soaking up skills and knowledge in whatever ways he could from whomever he could.  “I worked my chops up by just ‘doing it’ and learning on the job from watching other people.”

“This world with all this pain and sorrow also has all this beauty and one way of plugging into that, viscerally, is to be vibrating in harmony together.”

While living in Queensland, John bumped into a fella named Linsey Pollak and the two of them went busking together; John played tenor saxophone and Linsey played a broom, the end of which he’d turned into a flute (of course). “We played songs that he had written, and some that we both knew, and it was Linsey who first said to me ‘you could write your own songs!’” Having been given his first lessons in the ukulele by Joe Geia from the band ‘No Fixed Address‘, John would carry his banjolele with him everywhere he went – wearing it slung around his back, ready to whip out at any point and pair it with a quick bit of kazoo to entertain people at festivals or in the streets, in the piazzas of Rome, Bologna and Perugia perhaps, and even on a 24 hour bus trip from Dharamsala to Kashmir.

“The only real formal performance training I did was later on, with the Nanjing Acrobats of China, spending six days a week with them for three months in Wodonga, practising alongside members of the Fruit Fly Circus and Circus Oz. I was open to anything and everything and by that stage was feeling ‘this is so much fun, everyone should have this opportunity’. ”

John’s primary focus became finding ways for other people to experience the joy that he’d had of participating and being ‘in it’. For the first ten years of his working life, John acknowledges that he was very lucky to have been employed full time doing theatre with the type of community-based theatre companies where you weren’t just an actor, you were involved in writing the material, creating sets and props and anything and everything else.

“With West Theatre we went into housing commissions, we did projects with the Vietnamese Community at a time when they had newly arrived in Australia, we worked with the Nurses Union, we put on these very professional big community shows. There was a collective of between 7 and 12 professional theatre makers and together we would run events that involved dozens to hundreds of people in the community, putting on shows that were sometimes political, often based around personal and local issues; and community music was always a big part of that work.”

By this point it was the mid-80s and John became heavily involved in festivals around Melbourne and across Victoria. “Festivals were the most obvious opportunity for lots and lots of people to participate in a cultural event. These could be run as projects with artists in schools and artists in the community that culminated in a festival.”

Towards the end of a long period of freelancing, one of the jobs John started doing in 2000 was working for the Royal Children’s Hospital. “They had acquired funding from VicHealth to engage professional arts facilitators to work in schools and they were looking for a coordinator. I got that gig which was 2 days a week for 6 months and this kept going as an annual contract job among the many other jobs I was doing like the Darebin Music Feast, the Kites Festival and the Kew Festival, and stuff for the Royal Melbourne Show and City of Melbourne.”

Unsurprisingly, John had also learned to juggle by this point which came in handy and helped him to keep all these professional balls in the air at the same time, as well as beanbags, skittles, fruit, kitchen knives and whatever else came to hand.

Striving to support the voice of people who had been oppressed or suppressed drove John’s passion for agitprop theatre.

“It was therapeutic for me to be involved with music and with drama and I was always really interested in the application of creative arts techniques to psychological medicine, which I had only just begun to research as part of my medical training. This stuck with me and became a personal political goal of doing this type of work because of its benefit to people’s mental health… including mine!”

The Royal Children’s Hospital’s “Festival for Healthy Living” (FHL) program was an embodiment of this philosophy, and upon taking up a newly created salaried role of FHL Artistic Coordinator, by 2004 John found he had gone full circle from leaving medical school in 1976 back to working within a hospital where he remained until his retirement from that post in October 2021. 

So how did John keep up his energy? “Keeping a role for myself as a hands-on participant, even when I was coordinating projects, was vital for me. I’d end up being an MC or I’d pop up in the band playing the trumpet or tenor horn, keyboards or uke. I think my work as an overall coordinator suffered sometimes because I was so obsessed with being in things, but I gradually realised I didn’t need to be front and centre and that my role in life as I got older was in being a facilitator and capacity builder.”

John firmly believes that some of the best capacity building happens by learning on the job, side by side with someone who is really experienced. “I would be there alongside emerging artists, doing the stilt walking or juggling workshops, or building a gigantic puppet or encouraging kids in a songwriting session. At other times the job was all about writing funding submissions or facilitating steering committees, but doing only that would never last very long with me and I had to find at least some time to keep working on the ground. It was a crazy life rushing hither and thither!”

Finding ways to help people feel better, and experience wellness from connecting with other people in their communities, schools or families, working for the Royal Children’s Hospital proved to be a great way in for John to build countless productive partnerships in over 30 different communities across Victoria. More recently, working closely with local agencies, under the RCH/FHL banner the annual Dream Big Festival was established in Melton. This was run for the first time in 2015, with John at the helm as Artistic Director.

A year later, John decided he needed more brass back in his life and joined Melbourne-based street band, Havana Palava (cos he obviously had so much spare time on his hands). There he met Lyndal Chambers who at that time was coordinating CMVic’s StreetSounds project. As part of a collaboration between StreetSounds and the Dream Big Festival, together they established The Fabulous Meltones Street Band.

Facilitating the band was an opportunity for John to embrace participatory music-making and perform on a regular basis while bringing together community players of brass, strings, percussion and more, in a riot of colour and sound. The band has played at the Dream Big Festival each year, and at dozens of other community events including the local Djerriwarrh Festival, and also featured in spectacular appearances at Geelong After Dark for three consecutive years.

Since his ‘rewirement’ last month, John has been reflecting back on all of this history and allowing himself to dream of what might come next.

“In the future I do see myself as always wanting to get community music to happen with people of all ages.”

If history is anything to go by, John won’t be sitting still in one place for very long before his energy fizzes over and propels him towards his next adventure. There may be kazoos… Watch this space!

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria, with John Lane

Photos supplied

Going back to U-Bass-ics, with Oli Hinton

Nine years ago or thereabouts, Oli Hinton retired from UK academia and made the move to Australia for what began as a sabbatical holiday. Oli and his partner, Jess, had known Jane Coker for many years through playing community music back in the UK.

“We got in touch with Jane when we arrived in Australia and Jane said, ‘fantastic, can you come and volunteer for CMVic?’” Oli laughs.  

By the time the CMVic coordinator role came up some months later, the winning combo of life down under and volunteering at CMVic-bug had well and truly bitten and Oli decided retirement could wait and that here was an opportunity for him to get his teeth into something new and exciting.

“I wanted to do something even more interesting than I had been doing and working for something I feel passionate about which is playing music.”

Yet to deploy full-holiday mode, Oli embraced his new life and kept busy putting down roots and playing baritone sax in Havana Palava, a local street band. In what seems like no time at all he got to know more about the different music-making opportunities in and around Melbourne and started playing his accordion again with The Footscray Gypsy Orchestra. “I got to know more and more of the wonderful community that’s involved in community music in Victoria and I just feel that I have been incredibly fortunate.”

Baritone Saxophones and accordions aren’t known for being quiet instruments so how did a small, stringed instrument like the ukulele find its way to Oli’s heart? “We found ourselves often in the company of other people who were playing ukuleles and none of the other instruments we played were really suitable for playing alongside them so we thought, if we can’t beat ‘em we’ll join ‘em!”

Oli and Jess got themselves soprano ukuleles and started playing along, but Oli quickly found he missed playing the bass rhythm lines, and the strings of the little ukulele hurt his fingers.

“I kept talking about the U-bass and then Jess bought me one for Christmas and it arrived and I’ve never looked back, it is faaaabulous!”

Having never played a string instrument of that sort before, Oli found it took him a while to get to grips with all the different technical challenges and fundamental things like knowing the strings and where the notes were. “In my usual way of learning I did it by learning one tune and then another tune, and another tune and then I thought, ‘ah, I’m getting the general idea here!’ “

Oli confesses this is the way he’s learnt to play every instrument. “The great thing about learning by playing a tune and then another tune is that you get instant results!”.  He’s also quick to point out that a few lessons from someone who’s been playing for many years is also incredibly valuable.

As well as playing music, Oli has had a lot of fun arranging tunes for different street bands which has given his knowledge of music theory a good workout. “I’ve had to really get to grips with the keys of different instruments and chords and harmonies and actually as a bass player, you’re much more aware of what the notes are and the progression of the chords.” This experience has even led Oli to compose a small ditty for the BUF lunchtime concert on Saturday – something he never dreamed of doing in the past!

In considering the fundamental, scaffolding role of the bass, Oli sounds amused as he admits that played really wrong it can actually destroy a tune but has realised if you carry on with aplomb, things will generally be okay.

“From playing bass the most important thing I’ve learned is to keep plucking something in time and the great thing about bass is the ear isn’t very good at determining the bass notes…if you ever try to tune a bass instrument using your ears it’s really hard! Nearly all bass tuning is done with a gadget, by me anyway, and if you hit a bum note it’s fairly easy to get away with it!”

On Saturday, Oli will be running a workshop for absolute beginners and has promised that by the end of it, everyone will be able to play a tune. “Because I’ve said this is a workshop for absolute beginners, I’m going to start by which end you hold it! I can still remember how surprisingly hard I found certain things when I started, so I’m going to try and pull those out.” For example, string damping; when you start out you think ‘oh no, I’ve got to stop that horrible noise happening!’ The strings play off each other and you can get intermediate harmonics happening between them.”

Another thing Oli noticed when he started playing U-bass in a uke group was that rarely are you presented with the tabs for the bass chords of a tune. “So what happens is the leader of the group will say ‘let’s play so and so’ and you flick to the page and of course, you’ve got the normal presentation of lyrics and chords, and you then have to work from that to something which makes sense. It’s not like reading the exact bass line. You may be really lucky and it’ll be a tune you’re familiar with and you’re familiar with the bass line that goes with it, and so you can at least get the feel for what it should be.. or you might not!”

Oli is keen to acknowledge the joys and the challenges of online music workshops for everyone. “We know it can’t be as good as being together live cos you miss the interaction where you’re playing off each other and can see what each person is doing and developing things alongside them at the right pace, and that’s hard on zoom. But we’ve found that people get loads of fun from them. Things may go a bit slow or too fast from time to time but there’s always the opportunity to follow up!”

What Oli hopes more than anything is that anyone who comes to his workshop this Saturday leaves thinking ‘yep I’m going to get a U-bass and I’m going to take it along to my group’… cos they’ll have so much fun with it!

By Deb Carveth, Online Editor for CMVic, with Oli Hinton, CMVic Coordinator

**BUF took place online on Saturday 25 September. Take a look at what happened here: https://cmvic.org.au/whats-on/boroondara-uke-festival-past-eventl

MusicfesT: A New Look, Statewide Celebration of Community Music

Trying to plan a state-wide music camp at this moment in time is a bit like juggling with jelly. Unless, like CMVic’s Nicki Johnson, Craig Barrie and Oli Hinton, you had already been dreaming of ways to bring people together across time and space, even pre-pandemic.

“We had a brainstorm with Oli – back when we were volunteers at CMVic – to imagine the evolution of CMVic’s annual Music Camp. It was almost like Oli had some kind of vision of the future,” laughs Nicki. “Some kind of oracular vision, I don’t know what he was thinking but there was this provocation… How could we develop Music Camp?” Then, of course, 2020 brought on a year of lockdowns. Some additional State Government COVID-recovery funding led to Craig being employed as the Digital Coordinator. At the end of 2020 Nicki became CMVic’s Program Coordinator, a new role with a focus on state-wide programs linked to CMVic’s Growing Community Music project. “When the new year began, everybody felt filled with optimism, it was like ‘ta-daaaa, we’re back!’ and so when plans began for this year’s music camp, it seemed there was all this potential because we were out of lockdown and everything was going to be normal and straightforward.”

But Nicki’s thoughts kept returning to a term that Craig had coined back in that meeting with Oli about future music camps being run as ‘a community of communities’  which, after all, is exactly what we are. “I guess that term had just sat like a little sleeping seed in the background of my mind.” 

Nicki was keen to implement learnings and experience gleaned from Grantville Online into plans for this year’s camp. “I wanted to use what we’d learned from Grantville 2020 which was such a great vibe. Over the past year, everyone has become more familiar with the technology and I started to wonder whether we might use that as a way to connect with other places we were wanting to share musical ideas and experiences with.” 

Nicki began imagining how it might look like if everyone could all be together the way they really wanted to be, making music and feeling it resonate and pump through their bodies while using the skills they’d developed to enable them to share this and see what other people were doing elsewhere in other areas and in other ways. 

These thoughts bubbled away for a long time.  After much brainstorming and many meetings, the plan for a day-long ‘Musicfest’ finally emerged and took shape. “Really, it’s a crazy ambitious thing to try! Musicfest is effectively 3 music camps simultaneously rolling out in one day!” 

On August 28, CMVic will be facilitating three face-to-face teaching hubs based in Ballan, Emerald and Mildura. Workshops with local leaders will take place across the day for music makers of all experience levels. The day will open with an Acknowledgement of Country and a song performed by Maylene Slater-Burns, First Nations singer-songwriter and Deputy Chairperson of Songlines Aboriginal Music Corporation, and proud Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri, Yuin, Worimi, Ngunnawal, Gugu Djungan, Nywaigi, Gangalidda and Garawa woman; there will also be Zoom workshops from Kavisha Mazzella, Jen Hawley, Catherine Threlfall, Dan Maceoin, Alison McGann, Win Moser, and Will Viran. At the end of the day, everyone will join up for a celebratory concert, MC’d by ‘community music legends’ Lyndal Chambers and Brian ‘Strat’ Strating! 

For anyone unable to make it along to a hub, Musicfest Online provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere across the state and beyond to tune in and bring the experience of being at camp directly into their music-making community.

Nicki’s vision is for singers and players across the state to gather in pods, community halls, homes and verandahs, anywhere large enough for people to congregate around a screen and get a party of their own going on. All that’s required is for restrictions to permit this and for access to a screen and speakers large enough to allow everyone in the room to see and hear what’s happening in the hubs. 

Feedback from participants of Grantville Online showed that Zoom fatigue was a common factor after a day spent on screens and this has been taken into consideration in the planning of Musicfest. “When you have that as a secondary aspect to having all the people in the room, there’s no way you can be as exhausted because your focus is really on the people there with you. Depending on the level of restrictions, that might be just your family or it could be your choir or instrumental group and hopefully it might include people who have never been to music camp before and who get this lovely gentle introduction.” 

Pressroom Philanthropy is backing the event with generous printing support and advice.“It’s really lovely because we are hoping that this will help us to reach the next ring of contacts outside of the people who already know us.” Mildura Rural City Council is also champing at the bit to create a memorable inaugural event. In considering the unpredictability of life in ’21 and being on the border with NSW, Nicki is mindful that Mildura might be precariously placed for a face-to-face program. “I really want the community to have this amazing collaborative experience with us and I’m also frightened that NSW could derail us at any moment. I had a meeting with the Mildura team last week and they are so full of energy and galvanised to do something fantastic and a little bit different. They’re even thinking of maybe having their venue on one of the paddle boats which would be so amazing although I’m not sure how it’ll work with the technology!” 

Musicfest is a testimony to the innovation of everything to have emerged from last year, presented as a big, exciting, collective experiment. Way up on Nicki’s agenda, and something very much on her mind, is her wish that leaders don’t feel alone. “To a large extent I feel that we’ve been replicating each other’s efforts. Everyone is at home making a cappella videos for their groups to give everyone support during this time of separation and that’s been really draining and depleting and I really wanted a way that we could share a bit more, or at least look at ways of collaborating where the burden is a bit more distributed. Musicfest is one way of doing that but I’m also trying to think of other ways we can help each other out, using the technology and massaging it into doing things it wasn’t necessarily designed to do.”

Tickets for the Ballan, Emerald and Mildura hubs and Musicfest Online are on sale now. Nicki’s hope is that people will come along, join in the musical fun, and feedback to CMVic how it made them feel, so CMVic can learn more about running events that aim to bring together the music communities across the state. 

Of course, the organisers are ready for if restrictions mean a last minute change of plans. One thing CMVic is piloting is how to make participatory music events scalable depending on restrictions. “There are so many fallback stages for singers and music makers according to what the restrictions are. For Musicfest, the beautiful plan B will be to run it all online the way we did with Grantville Online last year, and the other end of the extreme is everyone together in a room – just people and no extra technology!  Musicfest gives us room to slide backwards and forwards along that scale and adjust to whatever suits the restrictions at that time. Hopefully we will always find ways to make the most of whatever situation we find ourselves in!”

A screenshot from Grantville Online 2020

Colour and joy at Grantville Music Camp

Written by Deb Carveth with Nicki Johnson, and Craig Barrie for Community Music Victoria

For information and bookings to Musicfest, click here!

A Community in Action

Dr Laura Brearley

Terry and I have been walking and filming in the Coastal Woodlands over the last couple of weeks. We’ve also been spending time with singing and ukulele groups who have been learning the song ‘Are You Listening?’ for the outro of a film we are making about the precious Western Port Woodlands, currently at risk from sandmining expansion. 

We have been inspired by the community’s willingness to come together and raise their voices in this way. This week, we have worked with two of Mandy Farr’s local ukulele groups, one at the Warrawee Senior Citizens Club in Inverloch and another at the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood Centre. There we were joined by members of the Bass Coast Post community and the Gippsland Singers Network. We have filmed the Vocal Nosh group at St John’s Uniting Church in Cowes, as well as some Coastal Connections participants singing outside the Wonthaggi Arts Centre. In the middle of the week, a group of us sang together and went for a walk in The Gurdies Nature Conservation Reserve, led by knowledgeable birder and conservationist Gil Smith. Last weekend, the Melbourne Climate Choir gathered in a park in Brunswick to sing for the film in support of the Western Port Woodlands campaign. The Climate Choir brings together members of different choirs from across Melbourne to support environmental actions. 

Next week, the U3A Choir on Phillip Island will be learning and singing the ‘Are You Listening?’ song. We will also be filming members of the Melbourne-based ‘Music for a Warming World’ collective and a choir from the ‘Save Western Port’ community, who are offering their support from the other side of the Bay in Balnarring. 

Nicki Johnson is a musician, an environmental activist and the Program Coordinator at Community Music Victoria. We have worked and sung together in environmental and intercultural arts projects in Bass Coast and beyond over a number of years. Nicki performed at the 2019 Island Whale Festival and has facilitated singing and ukulele workshops at Community Music Victoria’s Music Camps in Grantville. Terry has made a short film about Nicki’s work as a singing leader which reveals her commitment to climate justice and her approach to interweaving music and environmental action:

Nicki believes that community music can play an important role in raising awareness about environmental issues. In her words …

‘Music has a way of bringing us together.  If we venture into the areas of despair and grief, we won’t be able to get any work done. If we don’t feel hope, we can’t go forward effectively. I love to facilitate conversations and sing songs about the planet and the responsibility we have for making sure it is as healthy as possible. 

Singing and playing music opens us up. When we sing with people, our breathing and our heartbeats synchronise and we become one organism vibrating together. This opens our hearts and our senses and we are able to connect. I think the ability to feel connected to other people and to experience empathy is the thing that will really enable us to make a difference. 

I love that when we sing together, we start to resonate together and our hearts open. Singing is 90% listening. Ideas of blending and harmony are not just aural concepts. A choir is a living organism that can teach people how to be in harmony. Harmony is a lived experience. Giving people the opportunity to be heard is a powerful way to move forward together.’

Dr Peter Dann is another community leader who raises environmental awareness and inspires action. Peter is the Research Director of the Phillip Island Nature Parks. He has been working for over forty years in wildlife conservation, with a particular interest in seabirds and shorebirds, the ecology of islands and the conservation of threatened species. Peter was a guest speaker at a General Meeting of the Phillip Island Conservation Society held earlier this year. The topic of his presentation was ‘Ten Remarkable Things about the Natural History of Phillip Island: A Personal List.’ It was a compelling presentation, informative and from my perspective, very moving. Peter’s commitment to conservation was clear, as was the sense of care that has underpinned his decades of scientific work in the field. 

One of the ‘remarkable things’ he spoke about was the successful introduction of a population of Eastern Barred Bandicoots to Phillip Island (Millowl), now extinct in the wild on the mainland. After a successful trial release on Churchill Island, they were introduced to the Summerland Estate on Millowl. Their numbers are growing and the bandicoots are now doing so well, they have also been released onto French Island. 

A sense of possibility and agency was also central to Peter’s story of the buy-back of the Summerland Estate on Millowl, which has enabled the on-going restoration of the Little Penguins’ habitat on the Peninsula. Peter’s stories are engaging and inspiring. I wrote two children’s songs in response to his stories, one about Eastern Barred Bandicoots and one about Little Penguins. Over the coming months, I will be teaching the songs to local children and telling the stories about the conservation work that inspired them. The world our children and grandchildren are inheriting needs stories like these. Here are the links to the songs:

There are many reasons to feel discouraged at times in the conservation field. So much has been lost and continues to be threatened. It’s easy to slip into a sense of despair and powerlessness. The conservation work that Peter as a scientist and Nicki as a musician undertake is vital in the deepest sense of that word. 

On Saturday 17^th July, COVID-willing, you can also be part of this life-affirming work that calls for the protection and preservation of the natural world. The Bass Coast Artists Society is hosting an event, ‘Halcyon Harmonies and Reflections Exhibition’ at the Goods Shed in Wonthaggi. There will be photographs on display and local musicians will be performing all day. At 2.00pm, we’ll be facilitating a Pop-Up Conservation Choir to learn and sing the song ‘Are You Listening?’ for the Coastal Woodlands film. You are warmly welcome to join us. The lyrics and recording of the song can be found here.

And if singing publicly is not your thing, there are other ways you can be involved. You can learn to sign-dance the song (a slow form of deaf-signing) or you can be there to simply witness the strength and resolve of our community in action. 

To learn more about the Save Western Port Woodlands campaign and become involved in a range of ways, go to http://www.savewesternportwoodlands.org/

Nicki Johnson with partner Craig Barrie at the 2019 Island Whale Festival – Photo Teresa Cannon

Mandy Farr’s Ukulele Group at the Wonthaggi Neighbourhood Centre – Photo Terry Melvin

Written by Dr Laura Brearley
feature photograph: Walking in The Gurdies Nature Conservation Reserve with Gil Smith and friends – Photo Laura Brearley

Making Music, Chocolate for the Soul

By Scarlet Lee

A common mindset when approaching musical participation, especially working collaboratively, is that you need to reach a certain skill set before you can perform. However performance can have many advantages beyond other people enjoying your music.

Community Music Victoria is driven by the belief that every person should have access to the benefits of making music regardless of skill set. Making music can help improve our state of mind and stimulates the brain. Performing in a group provides opportunities to socialise and build friendships, and can also build up our team-based skills.

From personal experience as someone who plays the ukulele, performance is exponentially more enjoyable if it’s in a group. It gives the feeling that you are part of something more and that you’re contributing to something meaningful. It’s as though you are helping create a masterpiece in an auditory art form.

From a medicinal standpoint music can provide clear benefits. In treating depressive illnesses, four out of five trials involving music therapy were shown to be effective, this can be correlated to the brain’s reward centre. When a person is singing or playing music it triggers the reward system in the same way it does for things such as eating chocolate. This indicates that participation in musical activities can improve your mood. Additionally, researchers theorise that music making can stimulate the cerebral cortex which manages higher functions such as memory, correlation and processing of information. By stimulating the cerebral cortex it is essentially providing a warm-up for that area of the brain which allows it to process information more effectively.

Medically speaking, it is evident that there are advantages to playing music, especially in terms of mental health and cognitive function.

Although solo music playing can be constructive, singing and playing music in a group provides all the same health benefits whilst also introducing a social aspect. Making music in a group allows for social interaction and collective catharsis. We can express emotion through music as a group and certain song choices can provoke certain emotions. It also provides a sense of belonging for those included as they are part of a collective, and share experiences with their musical comrades. Friendships can also be built and strengthened through communal music, as everyone is participating in the same thing and building skills and confidence together.

Expanding on this, collective music making can build teamwork and communication skills through working collaboratively with others and learning how to have discussions with fellow group members.

Overall there are many reasons to participate in communal music making. Group music can improve mood and provide a cognitive warm-up, both of which have clear benefits to wellbeing. There is also a strong social aspect involved when playing music with others, and there is a sense of belonging and feeling like you are contributing to something greater than yourself.

As someone learning the ukulele I can personally verify that playing music definitely has its benefits, but when participating in a music group it is far more rewarding. The atmosphere itself is much more lighthearted and warm. There is opportunity for conversation or constructive feedback and you get to appreciate others abilities as well as the group’s as a whole. When you compare this to solo practise or performance you miss all the laughter and joy that comes from collaboration.

There is a strong social aspect involved when playing music with others, and there is a great sense of belonging and feeling that you are contributing to something greater than yourself…

Music is often a key component that relates to many cultures and allows people to be immersed in their culture. The engagement in our own culture is important, as we gain a sense of inclusion within our cultural community. Through music people can gain a stronger understanding of their identity and culture, and the identities and cultures of others. For example in Indigenous Australian culture the stories of creation are told through songs and music, and sacred music performed in ceremonies are a crucial aspect of indigenous culture. In terms of my own culture my father is British, and always enjoys when I play popular British songs on the ukulele. This illustrates how we can connect with our culture and share parts of our culture through music.

Overall there are many reasons to participate in communal music making. Group music can improve mood and provide a cognitive warm-up, both of which have clear benefits to wellbeing. There is also a strong social aspect involved when singing and playing music with others. Friendships and skills develop, and there is a sense of belonging and feeling like you are contributing to something greater than yourself.

Scarlet Lee is a year 10 student and a keen ukulele player who joined the CMVic team for work experience in April and May

Photo supplied

Singing In Step With Leanne Murphy

Over the past ten years, Leanne Murphy, a community musician from North East Victoria, has experimented with ‘a lot of things’ to keep herself and other people energised; running long-term projects, singing groups and ukulele groups.

Since the pandemic began, Leanne has been finding it ‘hard to know what’s what’, with the restrictions around group music-making changing so often in recent months. Not one to let this get her down, Leanne has returned once again to experimenting and having fun in finding new ways of getting back to community singing.

“I’d optimistically do ‘pay in advance for four sessions and invariably, one of them would have to be cancelled and it’s a nightmare having to do refunds and stuff so I’ve just decided I’m going to keep things casual, see how it goes and keep it all nice and fresh!”

Back at the end of March, the first project off the blocks was a Beechworth Easter Sunday Walk and Sing which was run, (well, walked!) by Leanne through Albury Wodonga Bushwalking Club as a freebie for club members.

“Combining bushwalking with singing, I wasn’t certain if anyone would be interested but 16 set off from the Beechworth Powder Magazine at 9am, after entertaining a number of tourists in the carpark with a rendition of Bele Mama (from Cameroon), and one more joined us halfway along the track.” 

The group’s first stop was One Tree Hill where they sang Hamba Nathi, with the English translating as “Come with me for the journey is long” in 3-part harmony.  Then it was on to The Precipice and morning tea, accompanied by Swing Low Sweet Chariot to celebrate the spirit of Easter Sunday. Various other stops along the way included Fiddes Quarry where the group had an audience of one for the haunting round, Be Still And Know by Jokhim Meikle.

 “A delightfully curious lady from Palestine stopped to listen and insisted she definitely did not want to join in.  We did manage to coax her into taking a video though.   By the time the group returned to the Powder Magazine, discussions were already underway about the potentials for a ‘next time’. I realised I’d never done a singing walk before and nobody else on the walk had ever done that before either. It was quite eye opening for me.”

Leanne has been walking with the Border Bushwalkers for around three years now. “They’ve really developed my confidence in how far I can walk and also what kind of challenges I can achieve, so I’ve gone from being somebody who’s never camped or hiked overnight to doing the Great Ocean Walk which is nine days of carrying everything on my back by myself! For me to be able to give something back to the club that I’m qualified to do and lead a walk with people who are very good at bushwalking but may not be as strong with singing, it was a real joy!”

Singing outdoors felt particularly good as Leanne has noticed people feel nervous about singing inside, in spite of the North East having had no recorded cases of COVID.

“There’s an underlying sense of wondering whether we’re allowed, or are we going to get a visit from the authorities looking over our shoulders saying ‘you can’t do singing’ and so I thought let’s just get something going and see who’s still interested in having a sing, and I think that people were just really grateful to have the opportunity to sing together again.”

From May 2, Leanne is running a series of informal, drop-in Sunday singing sessions to help see out the winter months. This project is called ‘Hearth Songs’ a name inspired by the album Hearth by Michael Kennedy. “I really want to do one of the songs off that beautiful album. It’s called ‘Indigo’ and is all about looking after this indigo planet we live on. Because I live in the shire of Indigo I thought it would be a good match up, too!”

Leanne is interested to see how Hearth Songs will go in a venue with casual numbers. “I’m just putting out an intention to the universe, as you do, to say ‘please let the numbers be perfect for this venue! So we’ll see how that goes.”

Prior to COVID, Leanne developed and delivered a program called Spring Sing which was run two consecutive years during October and November, and was enjoying thinking up other, short-term programs. “I used to run a longer-term singing group but couldn’t sustain once a week sessions throughout the whole year, and so I’ve been focussing on programs I know I can manage.”  

Following the success of the Easter Sunday Walk and Sing, Leanne’s hoping to continue with the bushwalking and singing theme to celebrate the springing of Spring, sometime in November. Her vision is to combine a weekly mid-week walk with more, joyous outdoor singing and hopes this will build up the health and stamina of everyone involved:

“We might possibly work up to a weekend hike where people can camp overnight and sing, doesn’t that sound good?”

Until then, drop in and join Leanne for some heart-warming community singing sessions to banish the cold and keep the glow going as we head towards winter. Hearth Songs will be stoking up each Sunday afternoon throughout May and June with chants, rounds and songs to warm your cockles through the cooler seasons.

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for CMVic, in conversation with Leanne Murphy

Hearth Songs is held from 4-6pm each Sunday at Wooragee Hall. Email leannemurphy@bigpond.com to join the event’s emailing list. Walking boots optional.

Online or On Stage: A look at What’s On with Bruce Watson

As both a song writer and performer, Bruce Watson is always thinking about how to relate to people through his music. “I’m very involved with Community Music Victoria although I’m mostly a solo performer who tries to bring about that musical connection through audience participation rather than teaching or leading groups.”

Over the course of the past year, Bruce has been exploring new ways to do this. The hiatus to live music and performing fed a pre-existing interest in ways to incorporate technology into his music-making practice which was forced to evolve as everything locked down in order to continue.

“I had quite a few gigs lined up which just disappeared and all the CD sales disappeared too. I found myself in a vacuum and I wanted to fill it with something in a way which would benefit my ongoing music career.”

Unwilling to surrender fully to Netflix and bread making, Bruce embarked upon ‘30 songs in 30 days’a daily song-writing challenge conceived as a way to keep himself distracted and busy. As a frequent facilitator of song-writing workshops, Bruce has been a long standing advocate of the ‘just give it a go’ approach. His self-appointed mission was to write a song a day throughout April, last year.

“If you write a song a month, then after a year you’ll probably have 3 or 4 songs that are really good, which you might not have had if you’d sat waiting for the inspiration to come. I’ve always said that, but I haven’t always done it.”

Bruce admits that staying inspired to write a song a day for a month was actually quite hard but having a good level of insight, he promoted it in ways that left himself no wriggle room.

“If you want to do something that you see is a challenge I always think the best way to make it succeed is to tell other people that you’re doing it. If I’d just kept it to myself I might’ve stopped after a week or two, so I posted it all over Facebook and I made a commitment to do a YouTube video every day. Sometimes making the video was even harder than writing the song.”

Bruce started getting good feedback which he describes as ‘a lovely encouraging thing’, but still found there were times when the inspiration wasn’t immediately forthcoming. He had a fallback folder of song ideas and ‘scraps of things’ but found much of April was spent wondering what he would do tomorrow and what he would write about that day. He came to realise that, in the end, something always percolated to the surface.

“To me it was a great illustration of how there’s an awful lot of stuff sitting in all of us in terms of creativity and if we do something to bring it out, if we consciously tap into that, inspiration will actually strike and it’s an amazing thing to realise!”

At the end of the month Bruce felt exhausted but satisfied. “It was something I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do and I did it! I anticipated writing a lot of little bits of songs that weren’t really proper songs, but they ended up being all whole songs. And more of them were of a higher standard than I had expected, in fact I was surprised by the quality I produced under those circumstances” laughs Bruce.

Since the latter part of 2020, Bruce has been part of the CMVic team instrumental in bringing Music Software Workshops to the world. While the pandemic made the need for this knowledge sharing particularly important and brought it to the fore, the MSW team were visionaries who had perceived a need for the implementation and delivery of such a program for some time.

This wasn’t just about COVID it was about the ways software can help to share music for both leaders and music group members.

For some time, Bruce has been using MuseScore, a music notation software, to share music with his panpipe band in a way which allows players to practice at home on their own. “Because of the traditional panpipe playing that we do, any given player only plays half a tune because the scale is split between the notes. It’s like you’re playing a button accordion or a harmonica and only playing the blow notes or the suck notes, so you can’t play a tune by yourself. This means you can’t practice on your own and that makes it harder to learn the material. It’s the same for a choir or any band if you’re singing or playing a harmony against the melody you can use this software to easily create all the parts yourself to practice with, and that’s how I’ve used it.”

Last year, Bruce also got to grips with virtual choir technology, which he tackled in a highly successful experiment using his song, Déjà Vu. This project brought together a number of singers from several different countries who each recorded themselves singing to a backing track provided by Bruce which they uploaded to Dropbox. “I updated my video editing software to DaVinci Resolve and used some of the processes talked about in the music software workshops to plan the project, put all the tracks together and work out how to share files. In some ways file sharing can be the biggest hurdle – which can be very easily overcome.”

Bruce’s ‘Deja Vu’ virtual choir project in the making. Photo: Facebook

“I think what’s happened is that COVID came in and everyone searched for something new, in terms of both technology and how to relate to each other and how the musical experience can be shared and there are some really good things about that that didn’t exist before, and those are things that I don’t think we want to give up, such as sharing music across geography. People can join from remote locations and even from other countries. I’ve been involved with Zoom folk clubs where people have participated from five different continents and it’s been absolutely wonderful. Understanding how to make Zoom work well is something I think people might continue to explore.”

That said, upon his return to live performing a couple of weeks ago, Bruce realised more than ever how the sharing of live music is a tremendous and absolute gift.

“I don’t know whether I ever really took live music for granted because it was always just a part of my life, whereas now I am conscious of what life is like without it and yes, you can share music through Zoom and so on, but it’s not the same.”

Something Bruce loved was seeing people react spontaneously to his new material. “At my first festival since lockdown recently I decided only to perform the 30 songs in 30 days. So every song was a live premiere, which was incredibly nerve wracking and I was very nervous, but it was so good to have these songs exposed to the real world and to be able to judge how people were reacting to them.”

On 2 April, Bruce will be playing live to a small live audience Under the Oaks where he will be encouraging lots of audience participation.  Bruce laughs, “It’s really great with these COVID restrictions because you can have a small, intimate audience AND a sell out!”

“I think for a long time we’ll value that gift of live music and that’s what I’m loving now, to hear people singing back to me. Music was a great connector during COVID but the magic wasn’t quite there. That’s something that only really happens when people gather together and share a physical space, but I’m so grateful that I’ve been going to Zoom folk clubs in the UK and have made new friends along the way too, it’s been really, really great. And there are a couple of people over there singing my new songs now, too!”

Catch Bruce Under the Oaks on 2 April, or stay in touch with his gig guide at brucewatsonmusic.com

Recordings of previous CMVic Music Software Workshops are available on Community Music Victoria’s website, here.

Photographs: Jill Watson via Facebook