From the Director’s Desk

RAN BAND NEWS EDITION NUMBER 17 17 DECEMBER 2010

WIND ORCHESTRA IN A RECORDING SESSION AT THE TRACKDOWN STUDIO, SYDNEY

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK

Welcome to another edition of RAN Band News. The articles contained in this edition tell a story of significant achievement across the band’s national and international program. Despite the ever-persistent funding challenges, the articles show that the band continues to reach many hundreds of thousands of people ashore and afloat. Collectively, our detachments have proven a very effective platform in which to deliver musical services to Navy. In addition to routine activities, our detachments visited Marysville in Victoria, Maroochydore in Queensland, Cairns in far north Queensland, Mt Morgan in South Australia, and Symmons Plains and Lachlan in Tasmania. We also recorded three major musical works for ‘A Flagship Recital Mk IV’ which will be released in July this year. Recoil by Joseph Schwantner, Bells for Stokowski by Michael Daugherty and Planet Earth by Johan de Meij are very significant works for Wind Orchestra and the standard of performance achieved during the recording sessions was second to none within the Australian Defence Force. In amongst all of this activity, we welcomed back to Australia 12 musicians who had been embarked in HMAS Kanimbla for RIMPAC 2010, and we deployed technical support teams to OPERATION SLIPPER and OPERATION MAZURKA to assist with entertainment tours sponsored by the Forces Advisory Council on Entertainment. Petty Officer Sharon Jarvis was selected to tour the United Kingdom with the Royal Australian Navy Lawn Bowls Association (RANLBA) and Able Seaman Natalie Urquhart was fortunate to work with the New Zealand Navy Band as a participant of ANZAC EXCHANGE. Leading Seaman Gordon Orr competed at the Australian Army Skill at Arms Meeting (AASAM) and placed third in the Champion Shot – Navy section. In previous years he had placed fifth, third and second. Gordon’s achievement this year was all the more remarkable noting that he hadn’t shot a weapon since the last AASAM twelve months earlier.