Come one... Come all ... From tin whistles to French horns, violins to ukuleles, guitars to clarinets, any instrument and players of all skill levels are welcome to join The People’s Orchestra in an all inclusive collaboration of dizzying heights, ambition – and fun. Andrew Veivers will push your musical boundaries, excite your sensory receptors, and suggest a version of an orchestra that you may have never considered - think session bar meets Wagner!?!
Since 2011, Andrew Veivers and Red Chair have been developing a community orchestra model suitable for use in high profile and demanding performance settings. The model was instigated through our work with the Woodford Folk Festival to establish “The People’s Orchestra” – an orchestra comprised of festival patrons, rehearsed daily throughout the festival and providing the musical score for the annual Fire Event on New Year’s Day. The 2014/15 People’s Orchestra performance included over 120 patrons providing the musical accompaniment for a 300 strong choir and a spectacular theatre / puppetry / fire performance to an audience of over 18,000.
We have also trialled variations of the community orchestra model at other festivals (Cairns Festival, Festival of Voices, Festuri Multicultural Celebration, Floating Land & Cygnet Folk Festival) and will be continuing to build the model throughout Australia and internationally through various projects. Each community orchestra project has required compositional processes that respond to event theme, cultural content, instrumentation and the demographics of the musicians involved. This has required the ability to work across diverse cultural musical forms including the composition of works based in gypsy, Balkan, contemporary classical, choral accompaniment, operatic and Australian folk.