Brassbanned talks with John Collinson - Director of the Melbourne International Festival of Brass.
MIFB 2012 will run for the last time September 24-29th, 2012. John talks about his 10 years with the festival, the running of a festival as well as the impact that it has had on brass playing in Australia.
Check out www.brassbanned.com for live streams of the festival!
Transcript
Auto-generated from the live stream, expect the occasional robot mishearing.
[Music] hello there loyal viewers and hello firsttime viewers I trust you soon will be loyal viewers as well uh this is a brass band exclusive with the director of the 10th and final Melbourne International Festival of brass Mr John Collinson John how you going very well Tim Brass Festival starts next week is that going well is it organized looks going to be great year
I think uh well organized and uh some great events on some of the best artists we’ve ever had some returning and some going to be with us for the very first time who’s coming out can you give us a bit of a spiel about most of the artists if you can remember who they are yes uh manotel brass are back which will be a big favorite for our our loyal viewers and yours um also
W Cliff Gordon’s coming back he’s been a few times Rex Richardson who’s been a few times some of the some great American players uh Steven me’s coming for the first time uh UK eonian player and also uh ravan blov the amazing horn player plus of course got our own Str bras quintet which are playing brilliantly and uh a number of other artists from ranr being involved in the education events as usual fantastic so this is the 10th and final
Melbourne International Festival of Rass um why is it stopping what’s what’s happened everyone loves the festival don’t they why isn’t it running again for an 11th year next year uh look there are some chances that it might keep going as a few people still talking about keeping it going it’s certainly the last Festival I’ll be involved with uh just sort of run my time
I think with the festival and um takes a lot of time and effort and energy and I think it’s probably time someone else took it on uh it also cost a lot of money to run it and uh we need someone else who’s you know someone who’s got a new vision for the future of it who wants to take it on would be very happy to hand it over to someone and uh we’ve had a ball doing it but it’s uh
I think it’s time for some New Direction and uh yeah someone who’s really got the time and passion to do it and I’ve run out of all of the all of the above so looking back so if the brass Festival does run again next year in Melbourne it’ll be Under New Management uh looking back on the past 10 years is there anything you would have done differently at any stage or you sort of looked back and think yeah fairly happy with how it’s all turned out oh like
I don’t really have any regrets about it um I would have been more careful of how he ran the very first f esal um but I suppose in in a way that sort of established its reputation in terms of the the level of artists we could get and uh really launched it from there but I don’t really have any regrets about about what we’ve done we’ve endeavored every year to have the best that we could get from anywhere in the world and expose you know
Australian musicians to the best and also to have the best Australians have the chance to to play on the international stage so um yeah it’s look it’s been great fun I’ve I’ve I’ve loved it met some incredible people and heard some amazing music so for someone like myself who’s into brass music it’s kind of been Heaven fantastic and
I guess the Melbourne International Festival of brass really worked as a template for other festivals around the world I know now that the shagle festival in Austria runs in a very similar fashion with that mix of concerts and master classes that the brass Festival does um do you see much of a change in terms of Melbourne brass playing and
Melbourne and Australian music making over the past 10 years with all this extra exposure to International artists coming down under I think one of the things we’ve been able to do is connect a lot of our students with International um players and students have gone overseas we’ve had students who’ve won our uh tall brass prize who’ve got orchestral jobs in
Australia and around and around the world we’ve had students come from overseas to our Festival as well look I think it’s just also heighten those connections between uh young Australian musicians who haven’t really known some the history of the greatest drone brass players like Barry tuell or Hector McDonald who’s you know in Europe and come back for our festival or
Michael M has come back from Chicago so it’s kind of educated another generation about some of the you know great players that Australia’s always generated who are from who are out there around the world now what are you looking forward to most next week is a festival is there a particular concert you’re hanging out for or just loving all of it as a brass nerd uh look really looking forward to seeing mon notel brass again obviously we uh three years now the brass
Festival is what introduced manotel brass to Australian audiences is that right pretty much yeah I think so so this year we’re thrilled for them to you know they’re traveling around the country sort of a we’ve been able to you know take them to every every capital city in Australia this year which is fantastic I think but they’re you know they’re such a unique group it’s going to be great having them back with us again and also just to see the interaction between them and
W cliff and Rex ravan who you know the collection of artists we get together each year have never all been together at at one Festival before so something unique happens every time and stuff we can’t predict which is great so looking at the program for this upcoming Festival it looks like by far the best range of artists all together in one place sort of the best of the best of the past 10 years
I suppose are ticket sales looking good are you expecting sort of sellout concerts across the board we’ve still got some tickets left but we’ve got you know we we’ll we’re doing some of the biggest venues and the biggest numbers of people we’ve ever done so you know doing hmer Hall on a Tuesday night we’ve never gone to that size venue so we sold a few th000 tickets to that
Melbourne town hall on Thursday night with James Morrison and and W Cliffe uh again it’s another huge venue back there again Friday night with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra um so yeah the concer this year will be the biggest attended concerts we’ve ever done fantastic sounds like it’s going to be a fantastic week and John on behalf of the brass nerds of
Melbourne thanks very much for running the brass festivals for the past 10 years I think they’ve done amazing things for brass playing around the country um look forward to catching up with you next week to have a bit of a chat enjoy the week thank you very much
