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HISTORY
The Queensland Catholic Schools’
& Colleges’ Music Festival has had an exciting history since its creation
in 1991. At that time a number of staff from Villanova College Coorparoo, who
had developed their own school’s comprehensive instrumental music programme,
were lamenting the lack of opportunities for ensembles from Catholic schools.
Opportunities for Catholic schools to perform, to come together, to listen to
one another and to get good positive feedback from professional adjudicators
were few indeed. Armed with these goals and good doses of enthusiasm and
perseverance the QCMF was born.
The past 20 years of history has seen
this festival grow from a humble start in 1991 with 12 local Catholic schools,
gathering together to recognize great achievements in Catholic Music Education.
That message hasn’t changed, although the scope and breadth of this event
surely has.
In
2010 we welcomed over 10,000 student performances, by
335 ensembles representing 85 Catholic schools from across
A distinguishing
characteristic of this festival is that it aims to be
positive and non-competitive, while still providing recognition to
outstanding performances. Every
performing ensemble will be adjudicated by encouraging music performance
experts, sourced locally and from interstate.
Directors receive positive and constructive comments both on paper and
in digital audio recording,
allowing this to be an educational experience for all involved.
The adjudicators for each section have the task of not only providing
constructive feedback, but awarding every ensemble with either a gold, silver or
bronze rating based purely on whether they feel a performance has been
especially refined, moving, inspirational or otherwise significant.
There is no ranking or placing within those categories, and each section
will have a completely different combination of gold, silver and bronze awards,
depending on the adjudicators’ impressions.
The important thing to stress is that
every performance is a success for all of the reasons that
we involve music in our educational philosophy - the merits of teamwork,
overcoming challenge, improving confidence, increasing brain activity and
learning how to express a thousand different emotions through the language of
music!
The history of the QCMF Acronym:
The festival first carried the name of
The Catholic Colleges’ Music Festival (CCMF), as early participants came
mostly from established Brisbane Independent Colleges, which had a tradition of
music established by their founding religious orders. Within a few years, the
growth of the festival and consequently increasing costs, lead to a search for
sponsorship. This resulted in the Festival reaching a wider audience and being
renamed the Queensland Catholic Colleges’ Music Festival (QCCMF) as schools
from outside the metropolitan area were coming in numbers to take part in the
weekend of music. A few years ago the festival the name changed to include the
word 'Schools,' to better reflect the name of all participants, thus creating
the Queensland Catholic Schools’ & Colleges’ Music Festival (which would
be QCSCMF). Whilst this
title now accurately reflects the heavy involvement in the festival of Catholic
primary and secondary systemic schools from Brisbane and beyond,
The QCMF
is now a feature event in the annual “Celebrating Catholic Education in
Queensland” activities centred around Catholic Education Week in the third
week of term 3 each year. It is
very rewarding for the organising committee that the festival is
enthusiastically supported by both Brisbane Catholic Education and the
Queensland Catholic Education Commission. Both organisations are sponsors of the
festival.
None of this could have been achieved without leadership from the staff, the music parent support group and the administration of Villanova College, which still organises and hosts the annual festival on behalf of Catholic Education in this state. May the tradition continue, as the students from Catholic schools throughout the state demonstrate increasing levels of participation and improved performances at the festival as the years roll by.
