Gallipoli instruments revealed

THE “ReSounding Gallipoli” concert today at the High Court, music played or composed during the Gallipoli campaign, as documented in diaries, letters and first person accounts, will be covered by our music reviewer Clinton White, but it has a wider reach than just this one performance.

The precursor to a major initiative called “Fleurs de Guerre” (Flowers of war) by Gallipoli Symphony artistic director and former “Citynews’ Artist of the Year Chris Latham, the standing-room only concert featured the launch of a commemorative publication of which just 350 copies have been printed – “it might become a bit of a collector’s item,” Latham says.

Another special feature was the use of historical instruments from Gallipoli itself, previewed on Friday by Paul Goodchild, associate principal trumpeter with the Sydney Symphony and WO2 Graeme Reynolds, Bandmaster at ADFA and trumpeter with the CSO. Simultaneously they played both the Australian and the Turkish Last Posts.

Kerry Everett, step granddaughter of Ted McMahon, with whom he had a very close connection, flew over from Esperance with her husband and the WW1 cornet given by his battalion in honour of this WW1 service to show both at the AWM and the concert.

On Friday, Australian War Memorial curator Chris Goddard showed “Citynews” a sandblasted and well-worn Gallipoli Cavalry bugle, as well as a bugle presented to the 15th Battalion by a Brisbane tailor in October 1915, before the unit sailed for Gallipoli.

Also being featured in the concert are a NZ Gallipoli Bugle played by Sgt David Keay, a Gallipoli cornet played there by an Australian bandsman, and three different styles of trench whistles, all used at Gallipoli, one of which was used by Brigade Major Dennis King (1st Australian Infantry Brigade) to sound the start of the attack on Lone Pine on 6 August 1915.

It is the largest collection of Gallipoli instruments so far to be played in a concert, although you can be this record will be outstripped when The Gallipoli Symphony premieres in Istanbul this August.

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