By Tania Phillips
A solo oboe in the outback, a brass trio on the beach and a string quartet in the rainforest… despite being the state’s leading music makers, Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) believe they just might have also created possibly the best tourism video ever.
QSO’s Season 2023 shines the light on music and celebrates some of the state’s most beautiful and iconic locations – from the beach to the rainforest, and the Outback to the city.
The season video, called Sounds Like Queensland, together with images in the season brochure, were shot to reinforce that QSO is an Orchestra for all Queenslanders! Every year QSO tours across Queensland, sharing music with people from the outback to the beach, the rainforest to the city, performing on dusty regional stages, in tiny town halls, schools from Townsville to Toowoomba and Longreach to the Gold Coast, and of course in the mighty Concert Hall at QPAC. All up, QSO travels 10,000km across Queensland annually!
Sounds Like Queensland is the Orchestra’s love letter to Queensland with musicians filmed on country in Iningai (Longreach), Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Maiala (Mt Glorious) and Meanjin (Brisbane). It features a specially commissioned piece of music by Cameron Patrick, performed by QSO and conducted by Peter Luff.
QSO Marketing manager Renee Jones said they were really happy with the end result.
“We dreamt big and hoped to create something long-lasting and beautiful,” she said.
“I think we achieved that. Our videographer Joel Tronoff has such an eye for special moments.
“How he has woven together the narrative of our musicians against the backdrop of Queensland landscapes is a testament to his skill and creativity.”
She said they wanted the video to be all encompassing.
“We wanted to capture iconic Queensland locations, so we settled upon the Outback, Rainforest, Beach and City,” Renee explained.
“Our musicians were touring to Longreach in March this year, so we jumped at the opportunity to go with them.
“This video is a love letter to Queensland, so with that in mind it’s available for everyone to enjoy on YouTube. We’ve shared it as widely as possible – at our concerts, on social media and in emails, even to Channel Seven News! We hope it’s something all Queenslanders can be proud of.”
The aim of the video was to firmly place the QSO in the landscapes of Queensland to reflect how much they tour regional and remote communities each year.
“We wanted to create something compelling to celebrate this,” Renee explained.
“We’ve never done something on this scale before. This project involved a year of planning from concept to completion. We commissioned Cameron Patrick to compose the music to accompany the footage, recorded the piece in our studio, scouted locations, styled our musicians, and then travelled to each place for a day of filming. It’s been a complex task, but an incredibly rewarding one.”
The idea has been on the drawing board for a while now though bringing it to fruition wasn’t easy.
“A few years ago we started talking about capturing our musicians around Queensland so we could truly represent our commitment to everyone in our great state,” the marketing manager said.
“It’s been challenging to find the time and resources for a large-scale project like this, but in our 75th year we decided to have a crack.”
The result can be found on youtube.
