By Natashya Fernandez
More than 70 young West Australian musicians gathered at St Mary’s Cathedral from various universities and Catholic schools to form an orchestra and choir, together with their teachers and the Cathedral Choir at the Solemn Sung Orchestral Mass at 11am on Sunday 23 July.
A new annual event, the Orchestral Mass draws together young students from schools across Perth and undergraduate students from the University of Western Australia and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) to form an Orchestra and Choir, together with professional Orchestral players performing alongside the students (occupying some of the principal positions in the Orchestra).
Director of Music at St Mary’s Cathedral Jacinta Jakovcevic said that the gathering of these talents is a very rare and unique opportunity which enables students to actually play for a Mass as part of an orchestra and accompany a choir and congregation.
The Orchestral Mass is a wonderful ‘coming together’ of young people, their parents and teachers and utilising their talents (and many hours of practice on their instruments) in the liturgy, creating a prayerful experience for all of us.
“It was also an amazing experience for the students to take part musically in a Solemn Sung Mass from a liturgical aspect and also to play works that were originally written for the liturgy, in the actual liturgy,” Ms Jakovcevic said.
The repertoire included Puccini’s Messa Di Gloria and Rutter’s For the beauty of the earth, and the Mass opened with a rousing version of All creatures of our God and King and closed with the beloved traditional hymn Hail Queen of Heaven, a special salute to Our Lady, the patroness of the Cathedral.
Click Here to watch a video of the Orchestra Mass