Well, that was different! Quite apart from having a nice little holiday in Hopetoun, I had a great time playing lots of piano in a long concert in the recently built Community Centre on 19 October. Despite coinciding with the local government election it was nearly sold-out. About ten percent of the local population turned up to this fundraiser for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which raised about $1,100. This will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a local mine.

Please note: in common with my other blog posts this is NOT a review. I’m a musician, not a music critic. This is simply a record of what happened with basic info about who did what. It’s only of interest to those who were there and perhaps their families. It’s a memento of an event we all enjoyed, the memory of which would otherwise be lost forever. Feel free to share and to make comments at the end.

The concert promoter was the Qualup Choir, led by Richenda (Chenda) Goldfinch, a local artist and poet with endless energy and enthusiasm. And, I might say, she can conduct a beat better than many others, and takes a lot of care over shaping the music.

I hadn’t met this community choir until a few hours before the concert but they had been working with recordings I’d made for them some weeks prior. After many years the regular accompanist, Mary Robertson, had had to withdraw her services due to ill health.

Toni Arndt, a wonderful soprano friend from the Perth Hills, drove me down. We were met there by other friends from the Hills, Jean and Henry Bourgault. In fact, there was quite a Hills contingent and I made new friendships with both Hopetoun locals and people from Perth.

Jean accompanied Henry for his songs and some of Toni’s. I accompanied Toni and the choir, and played several piano solos including two originals.

Toni wowed the audience with Seligkeit (Schubert), Porgi Amor (Mozart), It’s a Fine Life (Lionel Bart), As Long as He Needs Me (Lionel Bart), La Vie en Rose (Piaf and Louiguy), and Rien de Rien (Vaucaire and Dumont), with Jean at the piano. With myself at the keys she sang Liebhaber in allen Gestalten (Schubert), O Mio Babbino Caro (Puccini), Beside the Foyle (my very special arrangement with new music and new lyrics to the tune of Londonderry Air or Danny Boy, being the latest version with an extra verse with a new melody), Black is Beautiful (by Bruce Lawson and Toni’s late husband, Frank Arndt), and Bring Him Home (C-M Schönberg).

Jean also accompanied Henry in two songs which brought the house down: O Isis and Osiris (Mozart) and The Song of the Flea (Mussorgsky).

My piano solos were Rainbows Over Hovea and Puck at Parkerville (originals I completed in 2017), Song Without Words, Op. 19, No. 3 (Felix Mendelssohn), Solace – a Mexican Serenade (Scott Joplin), and the slow movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata.

Chenda has many talents. Months later I’m still slowly reading through her wonderful book of poems, photos, drawings, and paintings called Footprints of a Traveller (ISBN 978-0-9872072-7-2). See her Facebook, LibraryThing or GoodReads. You might need to get a copy directly from her. Great to read at the end of the day!

The Qualup Choir, led by Chenda and accompanied by myself, sang Some Enchanted Evening (Rogers & Hammerstein), Any Dream Will Do (Lloyd-Webber), As Long as I have Music (Besig & Price), Autumn Leaves (Mercer & Kosma), Can You Feel the Love Tonight (John & Rice), and The Ugly Duckling (Loesser). They began and finished with unaccompanied numbers: Kaya (Welcome Song, by Charmaine Bell), and There Will Be Peace On Earth.

The excellent compare for the evening was Coralie Daw.

My association with Jean and Henry is quite patchy but goes back a long, long way. In 1974, when I was in year 8 at Eastern Hills Senior High School (EHSHS), I was in the trumpet class with one of their sons, Phil. Our teacher was Sam Maher. He was no doubt a good teacher but I dropped out of trumpet after half a year.

Also in that year I was in Henry’s French class. I recall desperately trying to pay attention so he wouldn’t ask me too many questions, on the theory that he would ask questions of any student staring out the window as a crowd control technique. Consequently, he wrote glowingly of me in the end of year report, saying something about how keen I was. But as he said the other day, no-one remembers the foreign languages they learn at school. So true!

When I was in year 10 (?) Jean was (I think) the music teacher at the primary school next door. I recall showing her a theory book I’d been working through, standing outside near where the buses stop. She made some tactful comment along the lines of ‘you need to get a theory teacher.’ I don’t know why that did not happen.

Fast forward to early 2012 when I joined the Hills Choir Inc., based in Mundaring, and sang in the tenor section for a year. That was around the middle of Jean’s 13-year stint as conductor of this very strong choir. Subsequently, I’ve often accompanied them on piano at rehearsals when Libby Patrizi, the regular accompanist, can’t get there, and sometimes at concerts. (Libby is the daughter of Mary Robertson, mentioned above.) Sometimes I have played piano solos at their concerts at EHSHS, including originals.

But it was not until just a few years ago that I discovered both Jean and Henry had been students at Claremont Teachers College together with my father. OK, so now you’re wondering how old everyone is. Well, Jean and Henry are both 82 now but my father, John Joseph Jones (1930 – 2000), would have been about seven years older than they were when they were all at college as he was a mature age student.

Back to Hopetoun. What a lovely place, and such warm, friendly people. We all got lots of compliments and expressions of appreciation from the audience, which included tourists. I don’t think I was misgendered once, although, sadly, I didn’t get called by the singular ‘they.’ So much for dire predictions of stuck-in-the-mud conservative old folks. No, they consistently called me ‘she’ and were almost falling over themselves to thank and compliment me.

A big group of us did party, and went sight-seeing together. See my blog post Hopetoun Holiday.

We made a video of the whole event but it’s just for training purposes and for those involved to keep as a memento.