The Christchurch School of Music | Te Kura Puoro (CSM) formerly the Christchurch School of Instrumental Music (CSIM), is a community music education organization based in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The school was founded in 1955 by Robert Perks to provide musical education to primary school children. about CSM The CSM now provides lessons for people of all ages, and for a large range of orchestral instruments. The CSM features several orchestras, concert bands, and other instrumental groups, and provides numerous opportunities to perform.
The CSM provides musical education to the people of Christchurch through individual tuition and a range of performance groups. These groups include the Junior Symphony Orchestra, Intermediate Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Orchestra, and the CSM's top orchestra, the Christchurch Youth Orchestra. The School also offers performance groups such as concert bands, wind ensembles, recorder ensembles, rock and jazz bands, string ensembles and percussion ensembles. The ages served range from babies through to seniors. CYO page
History CSM originated as an instrumental group of primary school children established under the auspices of the Christchurch Primary Schools’ Music Festival. The children received tuition in orchestral instruments and in playing together, and gave their first performance at the Festival in August 1955. The scheme continued through the Music Festival Association and then the Christchurch Schools’ Music Association, growing from about 400 to 500 enrolments in the 1950s to more than 1,000 from the late 1960s onward.
The first constitution of the Christchurch School of Instrumental Music was registered on 26 August 1964 (and later again in 2008), and the organisation’s inaugural meeting as an incorporated school was held on 6 May 1965. Contemporary press material described the new incorporated school as the formal successor to an instrumental scheme that had begun a decade earlier and had grown to more than 300 young people in Saturday morning classes.
The School announced it was introducing choral music to complement the core instrumental music in 1986, and in 1992, the organisation changed its name from the Christchurch School of Instrumental Music to the Christchurch School of Music, reflecting the addition of vocal and choral programmes and a wider range of activities beyond instrumental tuition. By 1994, press material described the school as including seven orchestras, the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, junior and senior symphonic bands, jazz, brass and wind ensembles, recorder groups, chamber music, theory and aural classes, junior and senior choirs, pre-school classes and adult classes.
Music Directors The Music Directors of the Christchurch School of Music have provided the artistic, educational and organisational leadership that has carried the school from its founding as the Christchurch School of Instrumental Music through to its present-day role as a broad community music organisation. Each director has inherited both the practical demands of a large teaching programme and the deeper responsibility of sustaining CSM’s ensemble-based culture: encouraging beginners, supporting tutors, shaping orchestras and groups, and keeping the school connected to the musical life of Christchurch.
Music Directors of the CSM include Robert Perks MBE, Frank E. Dennis, Peter Zwartz, John Emeleus, Phillip Norman CNZM, Graeme Wallis, Mark Walton, Alastair Sands, Neville Forsythe, Stephen Nichols, and Celia Stewart MNZM.
Annual Demonstration Concerts School ran large annual demonstration concerts for many years in which beginners, graded orchestras, recorder and wind ensembles, choirs, bands and the Christchurch Youth Orchestra appeared in a carefully staged progression from first-year players to the school’s most advanced musicians, often ending with a massed finale. The scale could be extraordinary: about 950 instrumentalists took part in 1967, almost all 1,100 pupils in 1969, more than 1,000 performers in 1985, and most of the school’s 1,200 students in 1988. The concerts demanded major logistical organisation but gave hundreds of young musicians public-performance experience and allowed families to see the school’s full teaching pathway in one evening.
Christchurch Youth Orchestra The Christchurch Youth Orchestra (CYO) is CSM’s senior or flagship orchestra. The ensemble developed from the school’s top-level graded orchestra, known at different times as Orchestra No. 1 and the Symphony Orchestra; the Christchurch Youth Orchestra name was in public use by 1960, and achieved some prominence in its own right by 1972. Conductors associated with the orchestra have included Robert Perks, Alan Foster, Louis Yffer, Vanco Cavdarski, Peter Zwartz, John Young, Paul Mayhew, Brian Buggy, Gemma New, Luke Di Somma, Helen Renaud, Naomi Hnat and Grant Bartley.
Touring has formed part of the orchestra’s programme. Documented trips include Timaru in 1974, an Australian tour in 1993, later Australian tours in 2007, 2010, and 214, and regional tours to Stewart Island in 2008 and Mount Cook in 2009. The Stewart Island visit included a concert at the island’s Community Centre on 9 December 2008, reported as the first performance there by a full symphony orchestra.
References
External links Christchurch School of Music website Christchurch Youth Orchestra website