MIV2018 Festival Opens Today!

After many months of prep, today is the day! Hooray!

If you’re coming, I’ll see you at camp dinner this evening. If not, maybe I’ll see you at the concert? 😛

I can’t wait to see all my friends and have a fantastic time.

Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/light-the-dark-tickets-39366091038?aff=es2

See the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/305903166591081/

And doesn’t our concert flyer look amazing?

(Link to a shareable version here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwdTWPS792Wnajl5a2w1anlxUzBQTm5OOVpvV0NCTnVvRU9F/view )

If you can’t make it or even if you can, please share these links and the flyer around. The concert is going to be really good, I can feel it, and I want everyone else to hear about that. 😉

MIV2018 Update – Six Days Until We Open the Festival!

Can you believe it?

In six days at time of publishing, the Melbourne Intervarsity Choral Festival 2018 opens. There’s such a lot planned. Rehearsals during the day, social events most nights. I’m excited and have been putting in place the finishing touches for my portfolio: I’m Social Secretary so I’m n charge of the fun.

Over 100 people are going to converge on our venues for the festival. As I was writing this post yesterday evening, I realised that it was pretty much a week to the hour until my first event starts. Eep! 😀

It’s not all just games, traditions and fun. Over ten days we’re learning several pieces to then perform on Saturday 20th January at 19:30. Get your tickets now!! I’d love to see as many of my Melbournian (is that word supposed to have no ‘o’?) and Victorian friends as possible at the concert. It is going to be bloody amazing I can already feel it.

Bring it on! 😀

Here’s the ticketing link with some information: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/light-the-dark-tickets-39366091038

“MIV 2018 is proud to present Light the Dark, a moving musical programme offering hope in a time of global turmoil and upheaval.

The concert features Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region, Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody, Parry’s I Was Glad and the jewel in the crown, Elgar’s Light of Life. Conducted by Patrick Burns, featuring reknowned soloists Liane Keegan, Andrew Goodwin, Anna-Louise Cole, Raphael Wong and accompanied by the Melbourne Opera Orchestra, this concert will be a once-in-a-lifetime performance, and we hope that you will join us as we make history in the glorious Melbourne Town Hall.”

Would you do me a massive favour, especially if you’re reading this from a Melbourne or Victorian address (and/or through my Facebook) and “share the Dickens” (as one of my friends, a co-convenor, put it) out of this link? Even if you can’t go, pass the information along in case someone else in your circle might want to. Thanks heaps! I hope to see you at the concert – or at MIV, if you’re an IVer reading this.

*makes excited noise*

 

P.S. Take care of yourselves weather-wise! In Victoria, the next couple of days are scorchers, with more to follow later in the week (I’m very glad of aircon with MIV!). Meanwhile, in the US there’s a hell of a snow event happening atm, I gather. So yeah. Stay safe!

MIV2018 Update: Free the Freshers!

Another month has flown past! We’re now less than FOUR months away from the festival! Wow!! 

With that in mind, here’s the latest mail-out. It’s announcing a bit of friendly competition to get more freshers to IV, continuing the hunt for a Merch Officer, giving details about the next social event (I helped write that bit 😉 ), and reminding everyone that registration is open (2 months until timely registration ends so get cracking)! 

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From the Convenors’ desk…

There’s nothing like being a Fresher at IV. And there’s nothing like a bit of friendly competition between AICSA choirs.

Here at MIV2018, we’re combining the two in our Free the Freshers Competition.

Two FREE Fresher Registrations are up for grabs across two categories. So each choir gets TWO CHANCES TO WIN! 

Category One: Awarded to the choir who registers the most Freshers. 

Category Two: Awarded to the choir who registers the most members (fresh and not so fresh) to attend MIV2018. The figure is calculated as a per capita proportion of the choir (based on the census data recently and generously provided by your committees). 

The competition is open NOW and closes at the end of timely registration (Midnight 11 November). 

After that we’ll be busy notifying the winning choir(s) who can allocate their FREE Fresher Registration however they wish. 

They could nominate one Fresher to have their registration fee reduced to zero; split the credit among multiple Freshers to partially reduce the cost OR… actually we think those are the only two options. 

So get fighting for your Freshers to party at IV! Every registration received before 11 November bring the prize closer to your choir. Keep an eye on the total current registrants from your choir. More detailed breakdowns and current competition winners are visible to registered and logged in users. 

The MIV2018 Committee will determine the competition winners based on registrant information and relevant calculations. Committee decision are final and no debate will be entered into.
Join the MIV2018 team as our Merchandise Officer

MIV2018 committee is currently taking expressions of interest for the role of Merchandise Officer.

If you have a passion for choral fashion (and a deep-seated love of spreadsheets) then we’d love to hear from you.

To express your interest please reply to this email or email me directly at secretary@miv.org.au.
Save that (one) day in September

September is a busy month in Melbourne. The wonderful MIV host choirs are preparing for concerts, with LaTUCS and MonUCS performing in September and ROCS performing in October. Meanwhile, there’s sport, sport, sport going on outside.

Come join your choral family to fanatically watch the big game, dip your toes for score updates or ignore it completely with card games, board games and more.

There’ll be BBQs available for pre-game lunch and a tuck shop full of munchies to keep you fuelled for the afternoon.

More details for the Post/Pre Concert Party (that you don’t have to organise) will be released on Facebook and via email soon.
Registration is open.

In less than six months you could be taking the stage with us, a full orchestra and hundreds of fellow choristers to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime musical experience. But you must register to secure your place.

The summer of ’69 will be here before we know it. Register now to be part of the magic. We can’t wait to see you in Melbourne next year!

Peace and love, 

Alex and El xoxo

REGISTER FOR MIV2018

#MIV2018 Update: Main Concert Piece Announced!

I’m so excited… I’ve been sitting on this for months. Speaking of months, #MIV2018 is only five months away! Have you registered yet?? 

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From the Convenors’ desk…
It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning. It feels like winter is here to stay, but fear not! MIV and the summer of ’69 is only five short months away. And this month we get to reveal our biggest news yet.

A huge amount of work is going on behind the scenes to organise an amazing festival, but we think there’s one thing that really takes the cake. Without further ado, we’re incredibly excited to unveil our concert for MIV2018. 

The centrepiece of this exquisite concert will be the Australian premier of Edward Elgar’s uplifting ‘Light of Life’. 

Conducted by our magnificent musical director, Patrick Burns, Light the Dark will be performed on the evening of Saturday the 20th of January 2018, at the Melbourne Town Hall for an audience of up to two thousand people. 

That’s right! Not only do we get to perform the music of a renowned and well-loved composer, but we get to be the first people in the country to perform a dramatic and awe-inspiring oratorio described as a “resplendent and moving” piece, filled with “fascinating orchestral and choral passages.”

If you want to have a listen, check it out here.

Registration is open.
In less than six months you could be taking the stage with us, a full orchestra and hundreds of fellow choristers to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime musical experience. But you must register to secure your place.

The summer of ’69 will be here before we know it. Register now to be part of the magic. We can’t wait to see you in Melbourne next year!

Peace and love,

Alex and El xoxo

#MIV2018 Update: Registration is OPEN!

I’m so excited right now. If you’re interested, follow the links below from the email I received overnight. I’ll be doing that tonight after placement. It’s going to be a blast. Come along!

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From the Convenors’ desk…

Hi groovers,

Exciting things are happening in Melbourne. At our AGM a few weeks ago we welcomed Cameron, Gemma and Justina to the committee and we’re glad to have them on board.

And now, for the news you’ve all been waiting for. We are so incredibly excited to announce that registrations for MIV 2018 are officially open!

Register now for the festival and secure your place in the Summer of 69.
We can’t wait to see you – there’s only 6 months to go!

Peace and love,
Alex and El xoxo

MIV2018 Fundraising

Hi all.

Life’s been busy lately, as I alluded to last week.

Here’s another MIV update – a particularly focused one.

To recap what I’ve said before: intervarsity festivals bring together choristers from universities across the country for ten intense days of singing and socialising with a major concert at the end. My first festival, last year’s CIV2016, was one of the best experiences of my life and I made an amazing group of friends that just keeps getting bigger. Within the IV movement, I found my tribe. And I really want to help like-minded people find theirs. The IV movement is like one big family – we all have our little differences, which balance and complement each other. Within our IV family, people are free to be themselves. Sounds like a cliche, but I really believe it.

Atm, MIV2018 are launching a fundraising campaign. We have an ambitious target of $20,000, to achieve in four weeks. So tonight we have a Thunderclap to boost our notice. Want to support us in that? It’s suuuuper easy. Just click on this link, choose whether to support it with Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr or a combination, click support and done! It’ll post on your behalf at 18:00 AEST.

We also have a fundraising page over on Chuffed. Feel free to support us in that regard if you wish as well – there are perks which are outlined below. 🙂 If you don’t want to or can’t, no worries – but do you think you could pass the chuffed link on? That’d be fantastic. If you want more information about the IV movement in general or MIV2018 in particular, check out aicsa.org.au and miv.org.au respectively. Registrations for MIV2018 open soon – sign up to the mailing list if you’re interested!

I can’t wait until the festival. It’s going to be great! For another example of what IVs mean for people, read on below about my friend and fellow organiser, Alex.

Meet Alex.

She’s been singing with MonUCS, her local university choir, for 11 years now. Alex joined MonUCS on her first day of university, and it changed her life for the better. Singing in a choir gave her confidence and a sense of achievement. When Alex heard about the Intervarsity Choral movement she felt a little shy but decided she wanted to attend a Festival, and her life changed forever. Alex has friends all over the country, an opportunity to travel, to sing, learn and spend time with passionate, like-minded individuals. Alex is a high school teacher now and shares her love of singing with her students.

To help other people like Alex discover the IV movement and find their voice, the Melbourne Intervarsity Choral Festival is planning to perform an ambitious concert in Melbourne Town Hall. The concert will offer the people of Melbourne a musical experience never heard before in Australia and will provide singers from universities around the country, Melbourne high schools and the wider community a chance to be a part of a groundbreaking, history-making performance. We’re passionate about our project, but we need your help.

Our goal is to raise a total of $20,000, and your help is invaluable! 

Our campaign starts now, and we’re offering the following perks to donors:

1. donate over $15 to receive a personal thank you in our concert program,

2. donate over $50 to receive everything in level 1 PLUS an exclusive MIV2018 tie-dyed tote bag,

3. donate over $100 to receive everything in level 2 PLUS the official MIV2018 live music CD,

4. donate over $250 to receive everything in level 3 PLUS an exclusive MIV goody bag.

5. donate  over $500 to receive everything in level 4 PLUS access to 2 of our VIP Concert Tickets for regular ticket price (Melbourne Town Hall has unallocated seating, so these are the ONLY tickets that guarantee you access to prime seating in the stalls),

6. donate over $1000 to receive everything in level 5 PLUS 2 free VIP tickets, PLUS a program signed by our musical director and soloists.

The two highest donations received will get a personal meet & greet with our soloists, musical director, and festival convenors after the performance.

 

MIV2018 Update!

Hi all. The 11th of June has come and gone (seven months until the Festival! O.O 😀 ) so here’s another MIV2018 update. Yay!

Firstly, in terms of my own role, there have been a few “secret-social-organising” things that have occurred. Secret because they’re not cleared for release by committee yet! 😉 Let’s just say they involve emailing people, visiting places and coordinating arrangements. I can’t wait!

The MIV AGM is coming up, with a social event (which I created the description for) afterwards. If you’re in Melbourne and interested in singing and festivals, why not come along?

More from me at the bottom.

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From the Convenors’ desk… It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning. It feels like winter is here to stay, but fear not! MIV and the summer of ’69 is only seven months away! This month, we have some really cool news for you. A huge amount of work is going on behind the scenes to organise an amazing festival. Without further ado, we’re incredibly excited to reveal some of the repertoire for MIV18.   We can’t tell you everything just yet (life needs a few surprises, after all), but we can tell you that we will be performing Parry’s I Was Glad, Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region and Brahms’ gorgeous Alto Rhapsody (Alex would like to remind you all that altos are 1000% worth rhapsodising about). Standing on stage in the Melbourne Town Hall, backed by the beautiful Grand Organ, these pieces are going to be an absolute blast to sing and we can’t wait to have you there with us.  Excited yet? Head over to our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter #MIV2018 to let us know what you think!  Warming up your winter! Come one, come all! The thermostat’s dropping, the mornings have acquired the crisp chill that heralds the turning of the season. So we’re stoking up the fire at Ella’s and settling in for a good night. There will be a selection of boardgames on offer as well as hot food and drink on hand to warm you up – BYO favourite winter treats and/recipes to cook up a storm 🙂 Let’s eat, drink, create and be merry. The longest night of the year has passed, exams are over for the semester, the first concert season completed – what more could we ask for than to gather with friends? RSVP today! We can’t wait to warm up with you. Peace and love, Alex and El xoxo

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I haven’t written anything for over a week and that feels weird. I’ll have to schedule a few posts. But it’s going to be a semi-regular occurrence for the next little while potentially. I’m busy with uni stuff. Come July, that will be placement, where I travel an hour each way and have full eight-hour workdays (including lunch break), full-time for four weeks. So we’ll see how things go. Also, the last few days of June and the first week of July (riiight before placement) my family are going on a road-trip holiday. I hope to take lots of pictures and so on, but it’s likely that I won’t be able to upload them or write about them on here until we get back. I’ll post more about that before I leave.

Now, I’m tired. Goodnight!

MIV2018 Update – Fundraising Alert

Hi, all. In my role as Social Secretary for MIV2018, I’ve been doing a bit of organising. Two in-festival social events are in the planning stage of “venue-booking”, while another is in the “negotiate details” phase. Pro tip: if someone’s taking a while to get back to you, ring them. It might be the fault of an overzealous spam filter. 😉 Now all I have to do is wait for people to get back to me on my most recent round of enquiries and start preparing for the next pre-festival social event.

That event will be at the end of June, after our AGM. Should be good.

Around that time there’s another deadline that approaches. I should’ve blogged this two (or three) weeks ago, but anyway. We’ve set ourselves an ambitious target of raising $20,000 by the end of June, in order to make our biggest festival dreams viable. Yikes! It’d be a great help if you could donate even a little bit and/or share the heck out of the following link to our crowdfunding page: chuffed.org/project/miv2018. There are rewards attached for donations over certain amounts.

From the Chuffed page:

“We’re creating the musical experience of a lifetime

….

Music is capable of just about everything. It can create joy, set the soundtrack to our lives, and brings people together in a way nothing else can.

However despite all the spectacular things music can do, funding for the arts is always a challenge. The Melbourne Intervarsity Choral Festival (MIV) is aimed at, but not exclusive to, university students. This provides an extra challenge as many of these talented young people are strapped for cash at the best of times.

We’re not just a bunch of students. We are so much more. We are musically directed by world renowned conductor, Patrick Burns. Supported by a remarkable Melbourne Orchestra, and accomplished Alto Soloist. No spoilers, but our final performance at Melbourne Town Hall will feature the Australian premiere of a work by an acclaimed composer.

Here’s our plan

We’re fundraising. Plain and simple. We’re chasing the money, doing the hard yards, with the aim to get every university chorister who wants to attend the festival to Melbourne in January 2018.

Get ready for us Melbourne, we’re coming.

So far we have been supported by the City of Melbourne, Grill’d Local Matters and Bunnings Warehouse. But we’re not done yet, we need to do more, and we need your help.

What difference can you make?

With 200 singers flocking to Melbourne, we have a lot to do! Accommodation to organise, sheet music to purchase, rehearsals to run, celebratory dinners to create, and artistic personnel to pay!

Freshers (students who have never been to an IV festival before) can join us for $250, concession for $550, and full fee at $750. YOU can join us if you’re interested at miv.org.au.

But if you’re not a singer and still want to help us out, we appreciate donations of any amount to support this enormous musical endeavour.

$10,000 will pay for our wonderful soloists.

$20,000 will finance our orchestral accompanist.

$30,000 will allow us to significantly lower our student prices.

And here’s some cool perks you can have for supporting us

Over $15: A MASSIVE thank you from the MIV 2018 team, and the immense satisfaction for helping our dream come true! PLUS a personal thank you in our concert program.

Over $50: Everything for $15 and over PLUS an exclusive piece of MIV merchandise

Over $100: Everything for $50 and over PLUS the official MIV2018 live music CD

Over $250: Everything for $100 and over PLUS an exclusive MIV goody bag full of…..shhhh spoilers!

Over $500: Everything for $250 and over PLUS access to 2 of our VIP Concert Tickets for regular ticket price. Melbourne Town Hall has unallocated seating, so these are the ONLY tickets that guarantee you access to prime seating in the stalls.

Over $1000: Everything for $500 and over PLUS access to 5 VIP tickets OR 2 free VIP tickets, PLUS a program signed by our musical director and soloists

Two highest donations: Personal meet & greet with our soloists, musical director, and festival convenors after the performance.”

As I’ve probably mentioned before, music and singing is a massive part of who I am and want to be. So much heart and soul are going into MIV2018 to make it the best it can be and it would mean the world to me if you’re able to contribute and share. “From little things, big things grow” and all that (with apologies to Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody). Please? 😀

Sign up to the MIV mailing list here: miv.org.au/#signup

Btw, here’s a lovely little video (if I do say so myself) of my choir concert last night. Enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FLaTUCS%2Fvideos%2F1385991518104171%2F&show_text=0&width=400

 

MIV 2018 Update: Aqua-demic Dinner Announced!

(Hmm. I thought I’d posted this yesterday. Oh well.) 

So. Remember earlier in the week I mentioned some important emails and excitement? Below is what I was keeping a lid on… 😁

I hope you like puns. The announcement below is copied from my MIV email I received yesterday (11th May). Want to keep up-to-date? Subscribe here! 


Announcing our Aqua-demic Dinner

We all know you’ve been wading with baited breath, so for all coralsters from the high to deep C’s, we are eelated to announce that Aquademic Dinner will be held at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium!

Did you catch that?

Whale have a great time changing the IV tunaverse as you know it and making this Aquademic Dinner a little more fincy. 

This gorgeous aquarium is a must sea, with a view that is off the scales.

If you wanna be where the people are, don’t flake out on us and get ready for a reely good time!

 

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MIV Eurovision Party

Can’t wait til IV? For another fintastic time, come on over to our Eurovision party THIS SUNDAY for games, prizes and of course costumes 😊

WHEN: Sunday 14th of April, 6:30pm til late.

WHERE: 225 Cecil Street, South Melbourne 3205.
Plenty of parking is available and it is accessible by the #1, #12 and #96 trams. It’s going to be a fabulous night of glitz and music and we hope to see you all there.
Peace and love,

Alex and El xoxo
P.S. we hope you don’t get crabby about puns because we have pooled them shoal together on this email ❤️