We probably lost in total, you know, well over 150 instruments.
Clarinets, cellos, guitars, trumpets, saxophones.
Any instrument you can think of we lost.
The start of the piece is a bit of a calm before the storm.
*Music*
I think it's a really big challenge to translate something
of that magnitude into music.
I kind of use the piece as half a bit of a retelling in a way,
of the floods.
And then the other half a bit of a tribute to everyone involved.
So I used the different instruments of the orchestra,
which is very large, to create a bit of a landscape to retell
that story.
*Music*
Based on the predictions that were coming out at the time, we
felt that moving everything to the first floor, we'd done a
good job of preparing for what was to come.
So I realised that things wouldn't be okay when I woke up
on Monday morning.
It had come up, halfway up the windows on the first floor of
the building.
Where I'm sitting at the moment is the admin offices and it
just, I mean, it looked like a giant had picked the building up
and just given it a bit of a shake, and things were just, you
know, so topsy-turvy and everything was up-ended.
I don't think I'll fully ever be able to process it.
I was helping there on the first day after the flood where we
threw out the hundreds and hundreds of instruments,
including some my own.
So kind of having that end goal in mind of bringing everyone
together with the new instruments and I guess bringing
music back to the community kind of helped me in dealing with it.
After the flood, I was so disappointed when I realised
that my Maton guitar was covered in mud and water and broken.
*guitar strums*
I said the three things was my cat and my dog and my guitar
that I was hoping to rescue from the flood.
So I got the cat and the dog... but not the guitar.
I felt guilty that I hadn't rescued it. But I didn't realise
the flood would be so huge and it wasn't supposed to come into
the house.
Resound is a music instrument drive.
What we do is we take donated instruments and we redistribute
them to people who have lost instruments in natural
disasters.
Oh thank you. Oh that's ok. Can I get a hug? Take care.
It's a big deal for people who have lost a lot.
Often replacing a musical instrument is one of the last
things on the list to be replaced because the immediate
needs need to be met.
Thank you so much. Oh, that's okay.
But for musicians who earn income from it or who play it
every day, it's a big loss. It's something normal that they were
doing that they've lost.
I can remember thinking in the first week about the loss, the
loss - not just of our musical instruments, but how much loss
there would have been right across the community.
So resound has, I think that they're up to, you know, over
200 instruments throughout the community and the Conservatorium
has received donations of well over 200 instruments as well.
To receive the guitar from Resound, I was just stunned. I
thought, wow, this is beautiful. It's a lovely guitar. And just
to have this gift was just fabulous.
Having the music there and the guitar, it's been like light
coming on, you know, like Christmas lights or something.
I turn them on, get the guitar out, the lights come on.
Then when I'm finished, then the lights go off.
It really does mean so much to me to have my friends, my family
and my colleagues at the Conservatorium play it and also,
even people I don't know through Resound to be playing this
piece.
I'm really excited to hear it and see what comes from it.
*Music*
For me, I think some of the greatest pieces of music have
come out of really traumatic and tragic events.
So I think music really has the power to help people process
trauma and go through a healing process.
*Orchestral music*