During the holidays a group of our musicians travelled to China to rehearse and perform in “Tutti Festiva”. http://www.tuttibeijing.com/ They spent hours honing their own music skills in masterclasses as well as performing in festival honour groups with students from other Australian and Chinese schools. The festival was held at Kaiwen Academy – a new K-12 school built to educate 2000 students…as well as amazing Performing Arts facilities it also has an ice hockey rink… http://cy.kaiwenacademy.cn/en/

Educationally, this tour was an incredible opportunity for our musicians to reach the next level with their musicianship. The Tutti faculty included professional musicians working at elite levels as professors, conductors, composers and performers in Northern American, Chinese and Australian universities.

As well as creating lifelong memories such as performing on “The Great Wall of China” and listening to Beijing Opera and other musical performances from the faculty, our students, staff and school contributed to “The Dandelion Project”. This charity funds the education costs (including music) for the children of migrant workers as they are ineligible to access an education in Chinese schools. Overall, we were part of a $13500 donation!

Andre and I loved taking these wonderful musicians away to China. They were superb ambassadors for St Stephen’s School. We are very proud of what they achieved and we are excited to see how their experiences will feed back into the Music program. We would also like to acknowledge the wonderful work of Don Candy, who prepared the Classical guitars so well for the tour.

Please enjoy these photos:)