Learning from Karen

Mrs Carey’s Concert is having a world premier at the Adelaide Film Festival on 24 February 2011. This looks like a great resource for teachers and coaches. The film opens in Australian cinemas on 28 April.

This is the story:

At a Sydney girls’ school, music director Karen Carey prepares her young students for a concert at the Opera House. Believing in the transformative power of great music, Carey insists upon a classical repertoire, sets a dauntingly high performance standard and requires the participation of every girl in the school. Carey inspires many of her girls, but not everyone shares her passion. And they’re not afraid to say so.
Carey’s greatest challenge will be firing up the unwilling, and her principal antagonsit is 16 year old Iris Shi. Waging open warfare against authority, the charismatic Iris is the focal point of student resistance to Carey’s Opera House ambitions. Loftiest of those ambitions is the compulsory learning, by the entire 1200 strong student body, of the grand chorus from Verdi’s opera Aida. Off by heart, in Italian.
Iris is the only girl who gets seriously under Karen Carey’s skin. Emily Sun is a very different proposition. And a different sort of heachache. She is Carey’s star musician – a gifted but troubled teenager on the threshold of a brilliant musical career if only … Karen wants Emily to solo in a Bruch Violin Concerto. But to bring out her best, she needs to keep the girl from going off the rails, and then get inside her head. And that proves no easy task, because young Emily has her own distinctive take on everything.
Mrs Carey’s Concert is about music making and coming of age, about talent and courage, rebellion. About those prepared to open their minds and hearts to what the world has to offer … and those yet to discover the potential within.
(Press Pack)

I am looking forward to seeing the film. I am hoping it has some great didactic moments to share to compare with The King’s Speech. Margaret Throsby interviewed Bob Connolly on 15 February (repeated on 28 April).
I am hoping too it adds to a tradition of film making about music teaching that has included for me Mr Holland’s Opus

and As it is in Heaven

3 COMMENTS

  1. what did you think of the movie? It will be released in cinemas from April 28th in
    Sydney Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Brisbane with Perth and Hobart in May.
    Kim
    Music Films – distributor

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here