Saturday 29th August 2026
Ian Woolf Auditorium, Carey Baptist Grammar School, enter Gate 1, 349 Barkers Road, Kew
Concert 7.00pm
Pre Concert Talk 6.15pm – 6.40pm with Dr Sarah Kirby author of Inventing Percy Grainger: The Construction of Biography on Page, Stage and Screen (2026), and Grainger Fellow in the Museum & Collections department of the University of Melbourne.
To book tickets with TryBooking click here.
Guest Conductor: Tracy Videon – conducting a program of three Australian women composers – Mirrie Hill, Katharine Parker and Mona McBurney
Associate Conductor: Shane Walterfang – conducting Percy Grainger’s Hill Song No.2
Music Director: Roland Yeung – conducting a new work by Hayden Taylor Grainger’s World, Percy Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy and the 40th Anniversary Band playing Percy Grainger’s Irish Tune from County Derry.
Grainger’s World is a four movement work by emerging composer Hayden Taylor. From his residency a Research Composing Fellow at the Grainger Museum, Hayden wrote this work that was inspired by many ideas discovered at the museum.
40th Anniversary Celebrations: Past players are invited to play on stage Irish Tune From County Derry then share the Anniversary Cake.
Past and current players are invited to make an entry on the Community Archive. This online Google Form is a place for stories, memories, anecdotes, reflections, and moments—big or small—that help tell the story of The Grainger Wind Symphony. If there’s something we haven’t asked about, we’d love to hear it. To share your memory click here.
GUEST CONDUCTOR: TRACY VIDEON
A passionate music educator for over 40 years, Tracy has taught instrumental music in many schools across Melbourne and in country New South Wales. She is currently the Concert Band Co-ordinator at McKinnon Secondary College, where she has directed the Orchestra and bands at all levels. A low brass player, singer and conductor, Tracy’s performance experience includes 24 years as a musician in the Australian Army and 8 years as Musical Director of the Melbourne Rainbow Band. She now performs with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus. An enthusiastic supporter of community music, she has played with many ensembles, including the Grainger Wind Symphony, and frequently supports community musicians through workshops and guest conducting.
Tracy is completing her PhD in Music Performance (Conducting) at the University of Melbourne. She recently spent several months researching and conducting at the University of Georgia, USA. Her research recognises Australian heritage women composers and aims to share their voices through the medium of wind band.
In 2022 Tracy received State Music Camp award for excellence in Orchestral conducting. She was recognized in 2025 with the Australian Band and Orchestra Directors’ Association (Victoria) Certificate of Excellence for outstanding achievement and contribution to music education.
FANFARE for brass and percussion by MIRRIE HILL arr. Rowan Taylor
DOWN LONGFORD WAY by KATHARINE PARKER arr. LEROY OSMON
ARC-EN-CIEL by KATHARINE PARKER arr. TRACY VIDEON
NORTHERN BALLAD by MONA McBURNEY arr. JACOB EVARTS
COMPOSER: HAYDEN TAYLOR
GRAINGER’S WORLD by HAYDEN TAYLOR in 5 movements
In 2025, I was working as a composer in residence for the Percy Grainger Museum and as part of this I composed a soundscape to accompany the museum exhibition for Violin, Clarinet, Horn, Theremin, Piano, and Percussion. This work Grainger’s World is an arrangement of chamber work for wind symphony. The soundscape has an introduction and 5 parts running around 22 minutes. I wrote the music as a soundscape (not intending it to be concert music). Here is a brief description of the wind symphony arrangement.
Introduction – A pseudo-baroque overture inspired by the grand entrance halls of the Edwardian houses and museums that inspired Grainger to build his own museum. Here you are welcomed into Grainger’s world.
Part 1: “Folk Freedom” – Inspired by Grainger’s association with and writings on folk music, this piece is a lyrical, floating, and arrhythmic melody. Imagine the lilting folk melodies of rural Britain, where rolling green hills accompany farmers waking up to an early sunrise.
Part 2: “Grainger’s Band” – We now celebrate the composer’s towering influence on wind band music, capturing the feel of his many famous marches and reels with a ramshackle folk band.
Part 3: “The Queen of the High Seas” – This movement is dedicated to seafaring voyages Grainger took with his wife, Ella Grainger. Drawing from the antiphonal nature of sea-shanties and work songs, I created a sensitive and elegant seascape that lyrically celebrates Ella.
Part 4: “Toward Free Music” – As well as being a folk music innovator, Grainger was a lifelong experimentalist. Later in his life, he was obsessed with his idea of “Free Music”, his ‘ideal’ music consisting of independent arrhythmic sliding melodies. Grainger would dedicate the last 30 years of his life toward inventing new musical instruments that could perform Free Music. Starting with Irish Tune from County Derry it dissolves into a Free Music sound world.
ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR: SHANE WALTERFANG
In 2023, Shane was invited by the GWS Committee to return to the role of Associate Conductor role from 2016.
Shane Walterfang is a Melbourne born conductor, trumpeter, and teacher. He received his Master of Education and Grad Cert (TESOL) from Deakin University, Diploma of Education from the University of Melbourne and Bachelor of Arts from the Victorian College of Arts.
As a conductor, Shane has been involved with community music for over 25 years. He believes that performances are unique occasions where audiences and musicians live in, and for the present moment. His aim is to provide innovative performances, which are engaging for both audiences and musicians. His conducting credits outside of Australia include performances in New Zealand, China, India and the USA.
As a trumpeter, Shane has played with 5 of Australia’s professional orchestras including 10 years with the Australian Pops Orchestra. He was introduced to styles ranging from Paul Whiteman to Frank Zappa while playing with the Anne and John Hawker Big Band.
Shane is also a committed educator who aims to provide a range of engaging and stimulating experiences to encourage people to pursue music as a lifelong activity. He has held the positions of Head of Brass, Director of Music and VCE Coordinator. He is also a past Chair of the Australian Society for Music Education (ASME) – Victorian Chapter. Shane is also a qualified Meditation/Mindfulness teacher.
HILL SONG NO.2 by PERCY GRAINGER
Considering its early composition, Grainger’s Hill Song II is unquestionably progressive in its idiomatic wind scoring. Grainger takes advantage of the unique sonorities available for the wind band, and the resulting soloistic nature of the work calls for advanced musicians. Audiences have much to enjoy in this brief piece, from thick chromatic counterpoint to elegant, song-like melodies.
– Notes from Great Music for Wind Band
Considered one of the earliest significant works for wind band, this extremely colorful piece captures the essence of a hike through the hills of the Scottish Highlands. Sounds of a bagpipe drone support the earthy and rich tone of folk-like melodies that permeate throughout. Grainger writes:
My Hill-Songs arose out of thoughts about, and longings for, the wildness, the freshness, the purity of hill-countries, hill peoples, and hill-musics — the Scottish Highlands and their clansmen, the Himalayas and their hill-men, the Scottish and Asiatic bagpipes, etc. These compositions were part of a back to nature urge, and were written as a protest against the tameness of plain-countries and plaindwellers and the dullness, samishness and thwartingness of life in towns. Musically speaking, my Hill-Songs sought to weave the bagpipe tone-type (the skirling drasticness of the “chaunter,” the nasal fierceness of the drones) into many-voiced polyphonic textures. Hill-Song II is the outcome of a wish to present the fast, energetic elements of Hill-Song I as a single-type whole, without contrasting elements of a slower, more dreamy nature.
– Program Note from Michigan State University concert program, 25 October 2018
MUSIC DIRECTOR AND PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR: ROLAND YEUNG
For Roland’s Biography, please click here
LINCOLNSHIRE POSY by PERCY GRAINGER
Lincolnshire Posy, as a whole work, was conceived and scored by me direct for wind band early in 1937. Five, out of the six, movements of which it is made up existed in no other finished form, though most of these movements (as is the case with almost all my compositions and settings, for whatever medium) were indebted, more or less, to unfinished sketches for a variety of mediums covering many years (in this case, the sketches date from 1905 to 1937). These indebtednesses are stated in the score.
This bunch of “musical wildflowers” (hence the title) is based on folksongs collected in Lincolnshire, England (one notated by Miss Lucy E. Broadwood; the other five noted by me, mainly in the years 1905-1906, and with the help of the phonograph), and the work is dedicated to the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me. Indeed, each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody — a musical portrait of the singer’s personality no less than of his habits of song — his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesqued delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone.
– Program Note by Percy Aldridge Grainger
IRISH TUNE FROM COUNTY DERRY by PERCY GRAINGER edited by MARK ROGERS
For the final item in the program, we invite any past player present to join in playing this work.
Those left in the audience are invited to sing along with us with the word of “Danny Boy”.
Grainger’s Irish Tune from County Derry has stood the test of time for a number of reasons: colorful sonorities, straightforward accessibility, and a memorable climax. It is also a versatile piece, playable by both younger band and mature players, symphonic bands and wind ensembles. Irish Tune could balance a heavier work on the concert program, or it could be a thoughtful closing piece just before intermission. The broad appeal of this piece will undoubtedly assure its position atop the wind band repertoire for years to come.
– Program Note from Great Music for Wind Band
This tune was collected by Miss J. Ross, of New Town, Limavady, Co. Derry, Ireland, and published in The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Dublin, 1855.
– Program Note from score
For the following beautiful air I have to express my very grateful acknowledgment to Miss J. Ross, of N.-T.-Limavady, in the county of Londonderry — a lady who has made a large collection of the popular unpublished melodies of that county, which she has very kindly placed at my disposal, and which has added very considerably to the stock of tunes which I had previously acquired from that still very Irish county. I say still very Irish, for though it has been planted for more than two centuries by English and Scottish settlers, the old Irish race still forms the great majority of its peasant inhabitants; and there are few, if any, counties in which, with less foreign admixture, the ancient melodies of the country have been so extensively preserved. The name of the tune unfortunately was not ascertained by Miss Ross, who sent it to me with the simple remark that it was ” very old,” in the correctness of which statement I have no hesitation in expressing my perfect concurrence.
– Program note by Percy Grainger
Irish Tune from County Derry (published 1918) is based on earlier settings that date back as early as October 1902 with an essentially identical setting of this melody for wordless mixed chorus. Later versions for solo piano (1911) and string orchestra with two optional horns (1912) followed. The wind band setting is cataloged as British Folk Music Setting Nr. 20, and like all his settings of British folk music is “lovingly and reverently dedicated to the memory of Edvard Grieg.” The composer’s brief program note states, “This tune was collected by Miss J. Ross, of New Town, Limavady, Co Derry, Ireland and published in The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Dublin, 1855.”
– Program Note by R. Mark Rogers
Theories Behind Who “Danny Boy” Is
The identity of Danny remains open to interpretation because Frederic Weatherly never specified who he was writing about. [1, 2]
- The Departing Soldier: The most popular theory is a parent sending a son off to war, likely inspired by the rising tensions before World War I. [1, 2]
- The Irish Diaspora: Some believe it represents a parent saying goodbye to a child emigrating from Ireland to America during the famine era. [1, 2, 3]
- The Star-Crossed Lover: A less common interpretation views the singer as a young woman waiting for her sweetheart to return from a journey.
How It Became an Unofficial Irish Anthem
The song evolved from an English poem into a powerful symbol of Irish identity through timing and cultural shifts.
- Emotional Resonance: The lyrics perfectly captured the pain of separation, exile, and loss felt by millions of Irish families.
- The American Connection: Irish immigrants in the United States adopted the song heavily, cementing its status through early commercial recordings. [1]
- Percy Grainger’s Influence: Australian composer Percy Grainger arranged the melody as “Irish Tune from County Derry,” bringing the music to classical concert halls worldwide. [1]
- Modern Traditions: It is played globally at Irish funerals, cultural gatherings, and as the official victory anthem for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games.