Dreams of Another Now
Bridges Collective is excited to announce its involvement in the Stretto International Piano Festival. The festival features performances around the world on pianos with keys narrower than today’s conventional 6.5 inch octave.
The core of our mission at Bridges Collective is the belief that music and music-making is a universal human experience. We believe that everyone, regardless of differences of culture, nationality, income or size should be able to participate in listening to and making music. When we learnt of stretto pianos, we could not think of a more worthy cause to champion: Pianos with narrower keys that make it possible for people with smaller hands to be able to perform the music they love without their physical limitations being a handicap.
Please join us in exploring the wonderful world of stretto pianos in our next concert which invites us to dream of imagined worlds ... including ones where being able to access an instrument sized right for your body is commonplace.
Artistic Director Brenna Wee, on piano, will be joined by two wonderful artists, Diana Wuli on cello and Rozanne Mentzel on flute, to bring you a program of Dreams of Another Now, playing on a DS5.5® (5.5-inch octave) keyboard.
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Brenna Wee is a highly regarded pianist, collaborative artist and educator. She holds two Master’s degrees from the University of Melbourne, with specialisations in Collaborative Pianism and Piano Pedagogy.
A versatile pianist, she also studied Jazz Piano performance at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. Scholarships from both the Singapore and Australian governments funded her musical studies and her Graduate Diploma in Education.
Having grown up in South-East Asia and lived in many countries, Brenna founded Bridges Collective, a fine art ensemble which facilitates cross-cultural interaction through music-making. As Artistic Director of the ensemble, she was awarded multiple grants and awards from the Australia Council for the Arts, the Victorian Multicultural Commission and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in recognition of the ensemble’s valuable work in bridging cultures. These awards have enabled Brenna to take the ensemble on musical exchanges to Canberra, Melbourne, Singapore and West Malaysia where the ensemble has a well-established artist residency and composition workshop program.
Brenna continues to share the joy of music-making in her work, both in performance and education. She currently holds a position as an accompanist at Monash University, as Deputy Head of Keyboard at Haileybury College and is engaged in regular visits to Singapore and Malaysia as a pianist, associate artist and educator.
She is excited to be part of the Stretto Festival and believes that the availability of alternate-sized keyboards will facilitate future generations of young and established pianists with smaller handspans to engage in music-making with ease and confidence.
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As a contemporary international artist, Diana Wuli has performed in concerts throughout the USA, UK, Europe, Australia, and Asia. She has also performed with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, New Zealand Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico.
Diana has been the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes and awards, including the Donovan Johnson Travelling Scholarship (AUS), Thornton Foundation Award (UK), Eva Heinitz Cello Award (USA), and Janos Starker Scholar (USA). Her studies have taken her across three continents: Double Degree in Music and Commerce (BMus/BComm) at University of Melbourne (AUS), Masters in Music (MMus) at Royal Northern College of Music (UK), and Performers Diploma (PDip) and Doctor of Music (DM) from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (USA).
In addition to performing, Diana is also a passionate educator. She has held faculty positions at Vincennes University (USA) as Adjunct Professor in Applied Strings and Director of VU String Ensemble, and has also given workshops and masterclasses as guest lecturer at Miami University, Indiana University, University of South Dakota, and Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico. Diana continues to collaborate with string pedagogues and music educators to research and develop new string teaching methods. She is currently a Board Director with the Victorian Music Teachers’ Association (VMTA).
As an avid believer in the purpose and power of music, Diana is actively involved in creating and collaborating in music projects with the mission of bringing music and music education into underserved communities around the globe. She is the Founder and Director of Melbourne String Academy (MSA), a music organisation which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, featuring community outreach projects such as Virtual Cello Camp 2020 (VCC2020), and Virtual Music Connect (VMC). MSA was recently the recipient of awards and grants from Creative Victoria and Monash City Council.
Diana currently performs on a rare Australian made cello by W.H. Dow (1917).
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Rozanne Mentzel is a passionate musician and has led a rich and colourful life as a flautist and music educator. Rozanne’s sense of adventure and long-standing commitment to collaborative music-making have taken her throughout South Africa, the UK and Australia. She currently resides in Melbourne where she continues to throw herself into life and music with passion.
Rozanne’s varied musical tastes and her versatility as a flautist are evident in the sheer diversity of the musical collaborations she has been involved with genres as diverse as folk, rock and classical. Some highlights from her life in South Africa include live performances with celebrated South African folk guitarist, Nibs Van der Spuy, for his album Beautiful Feet; with rock superstars, The Parlotones, and, with the Durban City Orchestra in Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G as principal flautist.
In Australia, Rozanne created Resonance, a chamber music ensemble which has performed regularly in Darwin and in Melbourne. Rozanne is also a member of the Arafura Music Collective, which strives to incorporate early music, classical, jazz, contemporary and intercultural collaborations into exciting and challenging performances. She is particularly proud of their performances of Following in their Footsteps by Brooke Green, Of Stars and Birds by First Nation’s composer Nardi Simpson and Djana by Brenda Gifford.
Orchestrally, Rozanne’s commitment to welcoming diverse musical traditions continued with her participation with the Darwin Symphony Orchestra in 2021 at Barunga Festival which featured folk and first nations artists such as Manuel Dhurrkay (Saltwater Band), Don Nunggarlu (Mambali), Jason Guwanbal Gurruwiwi, Galiwin’uk Youth Band and Ripple Effect. She also performed a world premiere of Yumani by Don Nunggarrgalu and Lachlan Skipworth, which is based on a traditional Numbulwar song.
This year she is looking forward to developing Resonance Music Collective in Melbourne and performing regularly with the Preston Symphony Orchestra.
The other life comes to us
in a dream,
of another time,
another place
and through it, we touch
the secret world within
Insinuating
the wordless whisper
the eternal spiral
deeper we hear
the shape of us
Here, under the ethereal moonlight,
we dream - enigmatic bergamasques of Italy,
courtly graces of baroque intrigue,
bohemian salons of romantic France,
gauchos in the earthy plains of the Andes
Our wordless songs
of yearning and passion
Poem by Alexandra Serrenti