The Orchestra Victoria and their ‘mOVe!’ workshop came to Mornington, thus making an opportunity for me to compete.
The workshop is moving all around Victoria fishing for future orchestra students with musical expertise to teach and play wonderful music with them.
I play violin and I was lucky enough to be accepted to this workshop to play in my first orchestra.
It was a brilliant experience and I met a few lovely musicians and played with them.
But best of all was working with Dominic Harvey. He is very good and has played with a number of orchestras all over Australia for more than 30 years.
Our violin groups had two tutors and I found myself playing my violin between them. It was quite a scary experience because they play professional violin for orchestra every day and they can hear when you play wrong note or out of tune. Thankfully I kept my cool, but it wasn’t easy!
We played a number of classical and newer pieces like: Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Bolero and Tirolese; Verdi’s Nabbucco; Tea for Two and even one jazz piece and more.
Mr Harvey tried to make us play Frozen too but nobody liked it, not even girls, and he decided to make us happy and take it out of the concert.
I had a funny experience with Rossini’s The Merry Widow.
The notes were hand written and photocopied using a cheap printer. When we were practising, everyone halted on the rest while I thought the black dot on my paper was a B flat note, so adding an extra note when everyone else was quiet. I’m still embarrassed.
It was late in the day though young in the night that when the concert started.
At first I thought I was going to be afraid but instead I was determined maybe even a little impatient.
My fingers rumbled just begging to start. Time passed so quickly in my opinion and after flicking through all the pieces I got adrenaline bursts and wanted to play even more.
We almost had to repeat our concert because everybody loved our playing and were surprised how well we played with professionals. Eventually when I had to leave, time felt like it was moving extremely slow.
I am so happy that I was chosen to play with Orchestra Victoria and meet number of excellent violin players and Dominic.
Read the original article at the Herald Sun: Cranbourne Secondary College’s Eric Eljaste plays with Orchestra Victoria in ‘mOVe’ workshop
