Queensland Catholic Schools & Colleges Music Festival - History

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 21 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 2011 we welcomed over 11,300 student performances, by 361 ensembles representing 93 Catholic schools from across Queensland, and interstate. In 2012, the numbers have grown to over 12,400 student performances, by 427 ensembles representing 104 Catholic schools.

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!