Brassbanned tracks down the elusive Geoff Collinson - co-founder of the Melbourne International Festival of Brass.
Geoff gives some honest answers about what it takes to get an international music festival up and running, and reminisces about how the first festival came into being.
Transcript
Auto-generated from the live stream, expect the occasional robot mishearing.
[Music] loyal viewers hello once again you’re in for a real treat I’m here with the founder of the Melbourne International Festival of bruss or is it the co-founder anyway Mr Jeff Collinson tell us a little bit Jeff about how the festival started what 10 years ago now 10 years ago it started in a corridor actually strangely with the after a um
Michael Burton cello master class this is way back when Michael was actually living in um Zurich and uh he just completed a master class at the VCA and you at the time I had a lot to do with the VCA and I was just seeing such an amazing effect on the young people that you know through this master class and it just hit us basically at that point we have to do something we have to try and you know do something to create a long-term impact for
Australian brass players there’s lots of things happening for all sorts of other instruments but there’s very little on offer for brass players so that out of that little uh conversation in a corridor uh two gooses gave it a go trying to put it together in about I think the first one happened in Under 12 months so the first
Festival was 2003 so we’re talking 2002 you had this Corridor conversation that’s correct yeah 2002 we had the conversation and uh I think the first one might have been in April from memory 2003 certainly wasn’t September we we did it the first time earlier um yeah so after a quick phone call to Barry tuckwell to ask whether he’d be our first uh
Patron that’s when we just sort of went holy crap we’re going to do it so how does one go about organizing an international Music Festival I mean for those loyal viewers who might not be aware Jeff collinson’s a bit of a a legend of a French horn player he was principal horn with the aobo I think for 10 years then decided that wasn’t fun enough so went and did some teaching had a very very well-respected horn
Studio going then he gave that away and decided to run him you know International multimedia internet company um but Jeff back at the time how did you go about trying to organize a international brass Festival it’s an extremely good question we didn’t know what we were doing fortunately because of Michael’s connections and mich connections we we luckily could pretty much contact or you know work out how to contact anyone in the world at the top end of the brass community so uh we knew how to do that we didn’t know a whole lot about the rest of it and we’ve just leared by you know
Flying by the seed of our pants basically for the beginning we without I think reasonably common knowledge we lost a a very large amount of money in the first year and uh you know struggle to sort of keep that going ever since but uh um yeah you just uh it takes a hell of a lot of learning and
I have amazing respect for anybody that can do this the the amount that actually goes into it the thing that we’ve struggled with has obviously been some of the financial backing in the context of the amount that you really do need to put into your publicity and and all the things that actually go around it try getting brass players to it has been you know we’ve done a great job and particularly at the student level and uh you know um uh the professional level we’ve done pretty well out of it but actually you know having enough cash behind you to actually bring the general public
In that takes a whole other level of cash which we never quite had but look incredibly proud of what we put together over that time really really proud so this is the 10th year of the brass festival and it’s the last year of the brass Festival under sort of this management and I understand if it does go on again next year it’ll be different people running it looking back over the 10 years is there anything that you think now gee
I wish I’d done that differently or I wish I hadn’t done that or are you sort of Fairly happy with how things have gone uh out of the entire time there’s perhaps you know absolutely no way I’m going to mention names but I would say there’s been one dud act out of that entire time that that made a bit of a difference to one year but um other than that absolutely not no there’s nothing you can do you know you you got to keep going you got to look forward all the time and you know even looking at that the the difficulties that first year
Created nothing would get going if you knew how hard things were everybody everybody had just you know sit on their hands and never do anything so the only way from my in my opinion to actually get something going is to get in there jump in and and you know swim as fast as you can or what as the you know a saying something like that but that’s the only way to do it if you knew all of the things that went with it sometimes you’d never do it if you do it if
I did it now of course there’d be a whole other level of knowledge that you would start it with and there would be things using that knowledge that you do with but you know if if you uh you just got to be brave really any tips for someone looking to to run an international brass Festival somewhere in the world any what’s the number one thing to try and do first up toon well
I I I’ll it is it is difficult to do in the sense that funding and trying to get sponsorship in this particular Market is really tough we couldn’t have done it without having such an amazing group of volunteers Tim being one of them for so many years and um you know all the others you know people that most of you would never have seen at the festival people like
Veronica who’s just made such an amazing commitment to the festival sorry still gets me a bit emotional um for such a long time John and Michael of course done amazing things so you have to have that team behind the uh otherwise you got no chance you’ve absolutely got no chance te it’s all about team it’s all about getting everybody together that actually believes in what you’re doing and if you can’t do that you’re stuff to a start the sponsors and all that sort of stuff you’ve just got to work your backside off to make sure you can get enough through the door you know we’ve
Fortunately had great response from all the all the you know the shops and things that have been supporting us over the years but get your team right and you know we were unbelievably lucky with this group of people that actually helped us and I you know I understand it does take a great team but I think it also takes a great
Visionary to get one of these things off the ground so on behalf of Australian brass players thanks Jeff Collinson thanks John Collinson thanks Michael Burton cello for the part that he played in getting the Melbourne International Festival of Ras up and running and looking forward to a really great final 10th year Jeff thanks for joining us thank you very much [Music]
