Anzac Day Concert, Sydney Town Hall (Sunday, April 25 at 5 PM).
I’ll be performing in a special, Anzac Day concert.
The Anzac Day Sunset Festival,
The historic Sydney Town Hall, is a venue which has hosted many brilliant star-studded concerts and events over the years. The Anzac Day Concert & Sunset Festival will be a deeply moving ceremony. Featuring a Full Orchestra & Choir of over 50 musicians. The Festival includes a Procession of Flags, The Last Post and poetry and music by Elgar, Parry, Holst, Copland, Jenkins & the Australian composer Septimus Kelly who served at Gallipoli and died at the Somme.
My performance in Sydney on 25 April coincides with the release this week of my recording of The Last Post Flute and Didgeridoo meditation, which I will perform in the concert. The recording features Broome-based didgeridoo player Paul Boon.
THE LAST POST FLUTE AND DIDGERIDOO MEDITATION
Recording features Broome- based Didgeridoo player Paul Boon
John Noble Shipton: Light Horse Brigade
(Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand. ANZAC stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps. It commemorates the sacrifice of Australian and New Zealand military personnel who have died during war. Anzac Day originally commemorated the Australian and New Zealand forces who landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey on 25 April 1915 during the First World War. My grandfather John Noble Shipton was a Sapper in the Light Horse Brigade.)
A few years ago I posted a treated live solo flute performance on YouTube of the Last Post, which received a great deal of likes and comments.
THE LAST POST SOLO FLUTE VERSION
Aware that our aboriginal people have fought battle on behalf our country. It’s currently estimated 1,000 + Indigenous Australians fought in the First World War. My intention is to pay tribute by the inclusion of the didgeridoo in the new recording. The didgeridoo player is Broome-based Paul Boon, known for his performances at Womeadelaide and with Hugh Jackman.
This Sunday will be my first performance with sensational pianist
Together we will play the jig from the Serenade opus 7 by Anzac veteran F. Septimus Kelly, written for renowned Australian flautist and impresario John Lemmone.
John Lemmone
John Lemmone was a world-renowned Australian flutist and impresario. A stunning flute virtuoso with a prodigious technique, he was the preferred flutist of Dame Nellie Melba. John toured the world with her, playing flute obligato, managing and organising much of her touring life.
One of his most famous flute students, Victor McMahon was my very first flute teacher… Discussing this with another former flute teacher, the wonderfully erudite, brilliant Margaret Crawford. Margaret made the comment that in some ways I am a flute granddaughter in terms of John Lemmone, from the Australian side of my flute heritage, and a flute daughter in terms of my French flute playing heritage with the Rampal School, (having studied with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Alain Marion and Raymond Guiot).
John lemmone flute, (Nellie Melba plays piano):
Wetzger “By the Brook” (Idyll for flute and piano)
Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor: Nellie Melba with Philippe Gaubert, flute.
It is said that Nellie Melba and John Lemmone had an indestructible platonic friendship. It began at a benefit concert for Gottlieb Elsasser in Melbourne in 1884, and lasted until Melba’s death in 1931. Their association lasted 47 years with Lemmone managing concert tours for her. Touring with her as her flautist in Europe and the USA Canada and Australia.
Victor McMahon & Nellie Melba
Victor McMahon was approaching his 80s when I began studying with him as a 10 year old. Initially my studies with Victor were part of a primary schools initiative in which thousands of young students were given the chance to learn to play the B-flat fife. Largely offered to bright students who entered ‘opportunity class’. Amongst others Victor McMahon also taught professional flute players Don Burrows, Margaret Crawford, Linda Vogt, Jane Rutter, Peter Richardson, Paul Curtis, Geoffrey Collins, and Mark Underwood. I then studied with Victor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and for short while just prior to his retirement in his studio in Chatswood.
Victor McMahon was an extremely bright, generous, fun loving teacher, a skilled visual artist, a teacher who encouraged his students to follow their own musical and life paths, to value their own individuality, to be true to themselves.
I recall he recounted a couple of amusing anecdotes about Melba:
First anecdote, as I recall it: John Lemmone was ill and asked his brilliant protege teenage flute student Victor McMahon to step in and sight read for a Nellie Melba rehearsal and concert…
It was a freezing cold Melbourne night.
The heating was less than desirable in the particular hall where the rehearsal took place… Nellie Melba lived up to her nickname of ‘Nelly Long Drawers’ by lifting her skirts to display bright red flannel longjohns, much to the amusement of the orchestra, and the teenage flautist!
Anecdote Two as I recall it: At the time of the rehearsal, Victor was a young teenager who managed the difficult sight-reading with much skill, however he did made a loud note clanger of a mistake in a very obvious spot:
‘Very good little boy, but a B-flat would’ve been better’ said Nellie Melba, again creating great amusement for the orchestra.
John Lemone gave Nellie Melba an interesting moniker, dubbing her ‘Mrs Napoleon’ because ‘she did things in a big way’…
Flautists will be interested to know that John Lemmone was a full lipped flute player. Unlike Melba, he was diplomatic and considerate of other people’s feelings,
Along with Melba’s father, John Lemmone is considered the most important influential man in her life… Both Melba and Lemmone had similar backgrounds, with parents who had worked hard for a living . Growing up in Ballarat, John Lemonne played the tin whistle (self taught)
Spying a secondhand flute for sale an the local pawn shop, he borrowed a pudding basin from his mama and took it prospecting for gold in the Yarrowee Creek. Finding gold worth enough to purchase this flute with a few shillings left over. Lemonne had a fine career both as a flautist and an impresario and brought many artists to Australia including Padereski.
The above stories give me cause to reflect-on my own life as a flutist, as an Aussie, and as an artistic director / entrepreneur. I value the threads of history which weave together to make each and everyone’s individual story… My brave grandfather, Lieutenant Commander John Noble Shipton who had a spectacular naval career across two World Wars… The legacy, artistry and generosity of all of my flute teachers…
I had tears in my eyes as I watched the broadcast funeral of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The sense of devotion, the beauty of the music, the simplicity and dedication to service that the whole of it conveyed gave me a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. I barely belonged to this era and yet I yearn for some of its nobler values. I have a homesickness for the past…
Prince Philip Funeral
I hope you will enjoy the new flute and didgeridoo meditation, my friends. If in Sydney, please join us in the concert…
Sources: I Am Melba-Ann Blainey; Melba a Biography-John Hetherington.
Thanks Jane for such interesting information..
Thanks Etty 🙂