By Mandy Oakham
Music not machine guns will be the mantra for a special symphony concert to be held this month at Geelong College.
The concert will feature young Geelong musicians who are hoping to play at the heart strings of audiences with the aim of helping young Afghani musicians.
The local musicians will be part of a charity concert series called from the Con to Kabul involving graduates from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music which raises money for the Afghan Youth Orchestra.
The concert will be held in the Keith Humble Centre at the college on 19 August at 7pm.
The founder and director of the group, Ellan Lincoln-Hyde, is a proud, seventh generation Geelongian and is a musician.
Ellan first became involved after flicking on the TV and catching a BBC documentary about the Afghani youth orchestra.
“Our first concert was watched by a teeny-weeny audience of 15 people and now we are hoping to fill a 250-seat auditorium,” Ellan said.
“From the beginning, we have always asked our audiences to just give what they can, and that way we hope to make the format and the repertoire accessible to the broadest range of people.”
Founded by Australian Ahmad Sarmast in the early 2000s, the Afghan Youth Orchestra was the first group of its kind since the fall of Taliban regime. The orchestra enrols a gender-balanced cohort of poverty-line students and teaches basic literacy and numeracy, along with specific training in Western classical and traditional Afghani music.
The Con to Kabul group held their first concert in 2012, and over the past five years have performed more than 10 concerts across Victoria and featured many nationally and internationally recognised soloists.
Performers are mostly young Geelong-raised classical and contemporary acoustic musicians.
