2023 has been a success for the Burnside High School Orchestra, which has had multiple opportunities to perform throughout the year.

At Burnside, we are privileged to boast a full scale symphony orchestra, consisting of 84 auditioned members of all year groups, who have been loyally rehearsing an array of orchestral works throughout the year. The ensemble’s most major works this year have included Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, as well as a number of extracts from smaller works including Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, Vaughan-Williams’ Fantasia, Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, Massenet’s Thais, and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, featuring vocalists Jacob Craw and Shannon Shi. We were also lucky enough to perform a student composition - L’Ouverture Drastique, by Portia Bell.

This year, we’ve had five performance opportunities - a much needed change after the opportunities lost to COVID in previous years. The first among these was at our instrumentalist camp held at Living Springs in term 1, which was later followed by our annual Orchestral Showcase, in which we performed all of our repertoire, and then the Aurora Festival, which Burnside High School hosted, where we were awarded a Gold Award, and our Principal Clarinet, Peter Langford, received a Musicianship Soloist Award. A reduced orchestra also performed at the annual Choral Showcase, accompanying two vocalists, and the final orchestral event of the year was the Year 13 Graduation, in which we sent off our seniors to movements from Capriccio Espagnol.

Some members of the orchestra have also spent this year volunteering at Westburn Primary School, playing along in rehearsals and performances - a special thanks to these seven students.

We extend our thanks to all those involved this year - most notably, our many itinerant teachers, our student conductors; Matthew Seinafo and Alan Kao, who was also our concertmaster; and of course, our conductor, Dr Renaud, who has poured countless hours into our ensemble - we are immensely grateful for her commitment and guidance.