By Mikayla van Loon
Three talented musicians are set to hit the international stage as part of the Australian Youth Band (AYB) when they jet off to Singapore in six weeks.
The Year 12 students from Yarra Hills Secondary College in Mooroolbark were encouraged to join the AYB by the school’s instrumental music director Richard O’Toole, who is also musical director of the band.
Montana Haslam, Thomas Cole and Finn O’Rourke will be travelling with around 50 other musicians to Singapore for a seven day tour beginning 18 September.
Playing the flute, saxophone and trumpet, each of them started down the musical path in Year 7 and have developed throughout their schooling to now be taking on VCE music and AYB.
Finn joined AYB as part of the junior band two years ago, while Thomas and Montana both joined throughout 2022.
“The AYB junior program definitely helped elevate my music and that prepared me for the senior band which has been a really great learning experience. It’s helped me immensely, especially with my VCE,” Finn said.
“It’s been great. It’s helped my music improve and it’s helped me meet a lot of new people,” Thomas said.
Richard said the two entities of performing and practising with AYB, as well as at school, go hand in hand in making better musicians.
While mostly a performance tour, Richard said the band will get to experience some touristy options as well.
“They’re playing at Universal Studios in Singapore. They’re doing a combined concert with the junior college band over there and the main performance is at Singapore Botanic Gardens with the High Commissioner of Australia coming as well,” he said.
“They’ll have lots of other activities like going to the zoo to have breakfast in the wild with the orangutans, where they bring out the orangutans and they have their breakfast at the same time.”
For Thomas, he is most looking forward to “performing in general and seeing how well I do and improving more” while for Finn “trying something different and the Universal Performance” is what he’s excited about.
Being both a symphonic band and a marching band, Richard said if there happens to be a parade or festival while in Singapore, AYB will most likely march as well.
With the band able to play various styles of music like symphonic arrangements, cinema themes, as well as jazz, it’s the musical theatre numbers Montana, Thomas and Finn like to play most.
“There’s a lot of moving parts. But you don’t really feel like this emphasis on a section. I feel like it’s very coherent, like everyone’s working together and that’s when it feels like you’re working best as an orchestra, as a band,” Finn said.
AYB has just completed its 30 hour music marathon fundraiser on 29 and 30 July which was great practice for the band before heading overseas.
Richard said in the lead up to departing for Singapore, the band will continue its weekly practices on Saturday mornings from 9am to 12pm, as well as host the annual concert on 20 August.
