As the Victoria Theatre 3D Reconstruction Project enters its final stages, the creators Gaute Rasmussen and Vendela Pento now required musical snippets to provide the musical soul to their virtual reality model. Dr Helen English sourced the scores, and sourced the three singers, whilst Dr Gillian Arrighi engaged Andrew Hermon as musical director, , who undertook production of the three tracks in consultation with both Helen and Gillian.
The Victoria Theatre 3D Reconstruction Project was initially adopted by the UOn IT Innovation Team in collaboration with the University’s Hunter Living Histories, Cultural Collections and GLAMx Lab in the Auchmuty Library to support the research work of Dr Gillian Arrighi, Convenor, Creative and Performing Arts, in the University of Newcastle’s School of Creative Industries, who along with Stephanie Holm have been funded by the ARC, through the LIEF scheme, under the aegis of the AusStage Phase 6 Visualising Venues in Australian Live Performance project (LE170100003), a national project involving 12 universities, administered by Finders University.
The musical component was made with a grant from the Centre for the 21st Century Humanities for “Sonification of the Victoria” Theatre. The pieces of music that have been requested include Evangeline’s Song and Dance, Country Girls, Three Little Maids (from the Mikado). Evangeline was the opening performance of the 1891 Victoria. (Ref: 1891 ‘Opening of the Victoria Theatre.’, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW : 1876 – 1954), 8 September, p. 8. , viewed 18 Jul 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article135843188)
Progress reports on the development of the Victoria Theatre 3D Reconstruction are available here:
https://hunterlivinghistories.com/category/victoria-theatre-3d-project/
The video below is from the rehearsal of Try Again Johnnie
Musical Director – Andrew Hermon
Sound Engineer – Ryan Huthnance
Piano – Gerard Nicholls
Violin – Amanda Hovenden
Singers –
Alexandra Cuthbert-Freese (Evangeline)
Gabrielle Newland (Try again, Johnnie)
Eden Dennis (Three Little Maids)
The Instruments –
The Piano
The piano was made in Australia by Piano Makers, Stuart & Sons.
The Violin
Awarded to her via a tertiary scholarship, Amanda currently performs on a 200-year old Italian violin made by Joseph Dall’Aglio which was bequeathed to the University by Sr Moira Coaldrake.
For more info about the violin, visit: https://blogs.newcastle.edu.au/blog/2015/06/02/from-italy-with-love/?fbclid=IwAR3o6cCGi6WvGeGexGgoEgA4c4z05pk7uIx8zmjgCRyVQqGouA7KZQrMess
One thought on “Victoria Theatre 3D Reconstruction – Now for the music!”