UK music director here to train school bands
Published on: Friday, March 06, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: The UK South Norfolk Youth Symphonic Band's Music Director Mike Booty is in town again to conduct eight training sessions for school musical bands in the State and Labuan from Mar 5-11.Mike together with Rotary Club Kota Kinabalu and G&A Corporate Services Sdn Bhd will be organising the training and workshop sessions for school musical bands from SK Kian Kok, SM Shan Tao, KK High School, SJK Chung Hwa, Tamparuli and Beaufort Middle School. He will also be in Labuan from March 9-11 to conduct training for SMK Labuan.
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"The objective of this visit is to improve the standard (of the school bands) and show the bands different styles of music to enhance the skills and standards of school band members. "Over the last few years I have introduced various form of music to the bands, more enjoyable and fun styles of music because I believe if music is fun then you want to learn and do more. "If you get boring music that you'd be playing all the time and every week of the year then it's boring and the children will not be interested. "So what I do in the UK and started to do here is introduce these new styles of pop music and rock and roll music and also do a couple of pieces which are real band pieces which are technically difficult and some can and some can't cope but this time we get bands with different abilities so we are going to select a repertoire for the band with that particular ability and raise it to the next level if we can."
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No stranger to the local school bands, Mike has been travelling each year to Kota Kinabalu for eight consecutive years now to conduct yearly workshops with school band members and has also held a practice session with the Jesselton Philharmonic Orchestra."In 2008 and 2012, I brought my band here and we are planning to bring it back here again next year in August 2016. We haven't decided yet on the programme but probably we'll do a mass workshop with 300 students and six different schools and a big concert at the end or do it individually.
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"We certainly got a very big concert planned in Kuching with the schools there so there may be something similar here. It depends on what we can do but we raised a lot of money in Kuching during our last visit. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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