The United States is in for some auditory delights from Down Under next month when the top-rated University of Newcastle Chamber Choir arrives in country to showcase vocal music ranging from the 15th Century to Coldplay and Radiohead.

Members of the Chamber Choir of the University of Newcastle, an Australian university partner of GlobaLinks Learning Abroad.

Under the baton of internationally renowned director Philip Matthias, the choir will tour the U.S. and Bermuda between June 21 and July 14, marking the first U.S.-focused excursion for the group following successful tours to the United Kingdom, France, South Korea and China.

Comprised of University of Newcastle students, staff and members of the community, the 40-member choir will perform at the ‘Rhythms of One World’ Festival in New York (June 25), with the opening concert at the United Nations headquarters. The choir also will perform in Boston, Washington and Bermuda, and will compete in the World Choir Games July 8-12 in Cincinnati.

Top-rated in Australia, the choir ranked 8th worldwide in the Musica Mundi World Rankings (April 2011) from its excellent results in the 2010 World Choir Games held in Shaoxing, China. The choir also has regularly wowed judges in national competitions across Australia.

Phillippa Miskiewicz, events manager for the choir, talked with the GlobaLinks NewsWire about the upcoming tour:

Q: How many performers will be coming for the U.S./Bermuda performances and World Choir Games competition?

The University of Newcastle Chamber Choir at its Civic Theatre performance in November 2011.

Q: How would you describe the individuals who make up the choir – are they music majors, grad students, a mix of ages and backgrounds?

PM: A very eclectic group. We range in age from 18 to 65. We do have several music majors and music teachers, but about half the choir have no tertiary music background. Because we do have many students we have a fairly large turnover of members.

Q: Will Philip Matthias be directing the choir for the U.S. tour?

PM: Yes. He runs all our rehearsals as well. We are very fortunate to have such a gifted conductor.

Q: What pieces or styles of music will the choir be performing?

PM: Everything! From the 15th century to Coldplay and Radiohead. We will be doing a large selection of music by Australian composers as well.

Q: How would you describe the behind-the-scenes work ethic that gives this choir its special spark?

PM: We all work very hard, sectional practice, as well as rehearsals with the whole choir. We also do quite a lot of performances for the university that pushes us to learn music quickly. We all get on fairly well together. We have a lot of fun as well as hard work. I’m sure that comes across on stage.

Q: What are some of the key ingredients, or “special sauce,” that goes into the choir’s success as a global competitor?

PM: Vocally, the wide range in ages gives our choir a unique sound. The large turnover in choir membership means we never get stale. Also, our very diverse range of musical styles allows us to reach a very wide audience. In one concert it is not unusual for us to sing a Praetorius Motet in three choirs, then sing a rock song with choralography.

Q: What is everyone looking most forward to on the tour? (the
competition, community performances, site-seeing?)

PM: Hearing other choirs, and singing with other choirs.  Of course we are looking forward to the sightseeing as well, but when we came back from China two years ago we were asked to relate the most meaningful time on tour. It was the times we sang with other choirs – particularly where we had very little language in common but could sing together, and hearing other choirs from all over the world – that stood out for most people. I am sure it will be the same in the USA.

Q) Anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t asked about?

PM: It takes so much organization and money to take 37 singers half way across the world. We do feel very privileged that so many people both at Newcastle University and the wider community have enough faith in us to give their time and money for us to do an international tour.

Related posts:

1. Canada’s Acadia University Expands Study Abroad To Include University of Newcastle
2. GlobaLinks Learning Abroad Named 2009 Small Company Of The Year By Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce

The International College of Management, Sydney (ICMS), a GlobaLinks Learning Abroad partner university, was all abuzz recently as Leonardo DiCaprio and other Hollywood A-listers took over the historic castle that is the epicenter of the Manly Beach campus.

Filming of the Great Gatsby on the ICMS campus.

DiCaprio, with co-stars Tobey McGuire, Islan Fisher and Joel Edgerton, are in Australia filming The Great Gatsby (to be in 3D). Filmmakers have transformed the historical and iconic castle building at ICMS that houses the classrooms, administrative offices, restaurant and girls dormitories to look like a 1920s-era mansion in Long Island.

For news coverage of Leo’s latest movie, check out:

·         Looking Out for Leonardo DiCaprio

·         Set photos of DiCaprio from the Huffington Post

·         Photo of the campus transformed

A bit more ICMS/Hollywood trivia: The campus is also where Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were in 2006 and a TV episode of Master Chef (Aussie version) was filmed.

Related posts:

1. MasterChef Australia Airs Episode Featuring International College of Management, Sydney

Photo District News (PDN), an award-winning print and online monthly photography magazine, recently featured an article about “Edge of the Outback: Photography in Australia,” a three-week summer program exploring the Australian outback landscape through photography.

Excerpt:

Edge of the Outback At LaTrobe University
Stand Alone, Study-Abroad Course in Australia

IMMERSION IN THE OUTBACK: LaTrobe University’s three-week Edge of the Outback course offers photography instruction and intensive immersion in Australian culture during summer vacation for American students.

Midwestern college student Jennifer Schmaderer had always wanted to go to Australia and figured including school in her plans was the best way to do it. “I got online and looked around for the program that was most appealing and fit my summer schedule,” she says.

What she discovered was the Edge of the Outback (EOTO), Melbourne-based LaTrobe University’s three-week travel program offering photography instruction and cultural immersion to international students.

“EOTO is a stand-alone course in which students gain academic credits while undertaking an intensive learning experience in Australia,” explains LaTrobe professor Neil Fettling. Currently offered in two sessions that run in mid-June and mid-July—wintertime in Australia—EOTO averages ten to 20 students per session. While LaTrobe promotes the program through its Web site and in YouTube videos, Schmaderer learned about it through the international study advisory service GlobaLinks Learning Abroad, which works to connect students seeking study-abroad experiences with programs that will suit their needs.

GlobaLinks’s marketing director, Deborah Morrison, explains how such services work. “We set up the right kinds of partnerships with international programs that we think will work well for students, where they’ll be well supported once they arrive on campus. We’ve worked with a number of these schools for 20 years, so we’re very selective.”

“We don’t tend to recommend one school over another based solely on academics, because students are looking for more than just that in their study-abroad selection,” Morrison says about their approach. “Although I might say ‘Here are a couple of schools that stand out in my mind,’ more often it’s a case of saying ‘Here’s a huge selection how can I help you narrow that down?’ We counsel students into the best program for them based on academics and other needs.”

Read the article in its entirety here.

Find a link to a PDF of the full article here.

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1. Colorado Carbon Fund News Features GlobaLinks Learning Abroad
2. Canadian Student Magazine Features Article On Australian PT/OT Options

Crystal Falvo

Crystal Falvo, a student from Northern Michigan University now studying abroad at Sichuan University in Chengdu China, shares in a recent NMU article how she’s transitioned from living in small towns all of her life to living in a city with 11 million people.

Falvo, an arts in art history major who would one day like to open an art gallery featuring artwork from around the world, was interviewed about the cultural differences she’s experiencing. She explains how she’s enjoying studying abroad so much, she doesn’t want to leave.

To read about her experience first-hand, visit the NMU article.

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2. Student Snapshots: Video Posts from Sichuan University; “Fiji Sunset” Takes Top Prize In 2010 Alumni Photo Contest; Swansea Student Union Goes Green

10-Day Seoul Lantern Festival Underway

Seoul Lantern Festival

The 2nd Seoul Lantern Festival is scheduled to begin on Nov. 5, 2010, with the Opening and Lighting Ceremony to take place at the Cheonggye Plaza and the streets along the Cheonggyecheon. The festival will create a spectacular view at night by exhibiting a total of 15,000 Korean traditional and international lanterns from 29 different regions from 24 countries around the world.

Especially, to celebrate special occasions such as G20 Seoul Summit and 2010 Visit Korea Year (with Seoul), this year’s festival will be a place for festivities where Korea and the world and tradition and modernity go hand-in-hand, by featuring storytelling lanterns by theme and various colorful events.

For more detailed information, please visit http://www.visitseoul.net/en/index.do?_method=main.

Lonely Planet Puts Wellington and Newcastle As Top 10 Cities to Visit in 2011

Wellington, New Zealand, and Newcastle, Australia, are ranked number 4 and 9, respectively, on the Lonely Planet “Top 10 Cities” in the world for 2011 list.

Here’s what Lonely Planet had to say on:

Wellington

Wellington is Cool-with-a-capital-C, crammed with more bars, cafes and restaurants per capita than New York, and a slew of gourmet producers including some 10 independent coffee roasteries. Year-round you’ll find arts and cultural events in abundance. Likewise, its film industry, ‘Wellywood’, centered on the Miramar Peninsula, is booming thanks in large part to the success of Wellingtonian Sir Peter Jackson (executive producer of the 2011 and 2012 Hobbit movies currently being made here). This little capital will be front-and-center on the world stage in 2011 when New Zealand hosts the Rugby World Cup.

Newcastle

Is it Australia’s most underrated city? Anyone surprised to see Newcastle on the list of 2011′s hottest cities (and there’s a few of you, right?) probably hasn’t pulled in off the Pacific Highway, or at least not for a while. Newcastle flies under the radar of Aussies and international travelers in part because it’s overshadowed by its bigger, bolder and better-known sibling, Sydney, 150km south. But, at around one-tenth the size, Australia’s second-oldest city has Sydney-like assets: surf beaches, a sun-drenched subtropical climate, and diverse dining, nightlife and arts. Not only is Newcastle ideally located just two hours by road or rail or 30 minutes by plane or seaplane from Sydney, it’s less than an hour’s drive west to the Hunter Valley wineries, south to sailboat-filled Lake Macquarie, north to whale-watching and sharkfeeding at Port Stephens and to sandboarding at Stockton Beach (the southern end of the 32km-long beach is a five-minute ferry ride across Newcastle’s harbour).

For the entire Top 10 list, visit Lonely Planet’s website.

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Sydney Conservatorium of Music Chamber Orchestra’s U.S. Tour Includes Oct. 26 Concert at CU Boulder

Some of the best young Australian and American musicians are uniting in Boulder Oct. 26 for an historic concert blending the modern musical traditions of their home countries and other points on the globe.

The Sydney Conservatorium of Music (SCM) Chamber Orchestra , in its first-ever U.S. tour, is set to perform with three American music schools on three separate stops, including the Julliard School in New York (Oct. 18), the San Francisco Conservatory (Oct. 22), and finally, the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder (Oct. 26).

Maestro Imre Palló conducts the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Chamber Orchestra.

“Every part of the world is different, and every part of the world gives you a new experience,” said Prof. Imre Palló, chair of conducting and opera production at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. “We are really excited to experience all of these different music schools.”

The Boulder performance will take place Oct. 26 at 7:30 p.m. at Macky Auditorium on the CU Boulder campus and will not be a ticketed event.

Colorado-based GlobaLinks Learning Abroad, which through its AustraLearn study abroad program is affiliated with the University of Sydney and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, is contacting fellow international education colleagues in the region to encourage them to attend the Boulder performance.

“We are excited to bring our colleagues in international education together to enjoy the musical talents of these Australian and U.S. students,” said Cynthia Banks, GlobaLinks Learning Abroad’s founder and executive director. “It is a tremendous opportunity to witness the educational power of a shared cultural experience.”

For the performance, the musicians will be sitting together one beside the other, one from Australia, one from Colorado, said Palló, a world-renowned conductor whose career spans almost five decades and numerous continents, including in the United States, where he conducted the National Symphony Orchestra and the New York City Opera.

“I hope good friendships and future connections will come out of this,” Palló said.

The U.S. and Australian orchestras will have only a few hours to rehearse together before performing, but Palló expects the universal language of music to quickly unify their sound.

“I hope it will be very easy,” he said, “because music is music. Musicality is musicality. They have very good students, and we have very good students.”

True to the collaborative nature of the performances, Palló will share conducting responsibilities with maestros from the American music schools, including Prof. Gary Lewis, director of orchestral studies and professor of music at the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Maestro Gary Lewis conducts the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music Orchestra.

“Getting to interact with international students is a broadening experience,” said Lewis, who is also music director and conductor of the Midland-Odessa (TX) Symphony Orchestra. “The more we open ourselves to travel and interacting with other cultures, the more we become well rounded as human beings, more knowledgeable and more appreciative.”

The Boulder stop on the tour came about through connections between the deans of both music schools, Lewis said.

“I think it’s both unique and important,” Lewis said of the performance. “It is great to have cross-cultural exchanges between students and between countries.”

In Boulder, the 34 touring Australian students, chosen after highly competitive auditions, will join about 50 CU Boulder College of Music students to perform “American Festival Overture” by American composer William Schuman (Pallo conducting) and “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” by English Composer Benjamin Britten (Lewis conducting).

In addition, CU Boulder’s orchestra will perform “Variaciones Concertantes” by modern Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, and the Sydney Conservatorium’s musicians will perform “Sequenzas Concertantes” by modern Australian composer Richard Mills.

“It is really as collaborative as we can possible be without two conductors on the podium at the same time,” Palló’ said.

For audiences, the performances will reveal the rich modern musical traditions of Australia and the United States while showcasing the world-class musicianship found in both countries.

For the Sydney Conservatorium of Music musicians, the U.S. tour helps broaden and diversify their educations, Palló’ said. Such tours, which last year took the group to Europe, ensure students learn how music is made, experienced and performed in other places.

“We don’t want them to be locked into one trail,” Palló’ said.

For the U.S. students, the performance is a unique opportunity to expose them to the great musical training going on in Australia and the music of an unfamiliar composer from the other side of the world, Lewis said.

“It’s one of the great things that music can accomplish just about better than any other collaboration or interaction,” he said. “It’s unique in that we don’t get to do this every day.”

Related posts:

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Video and blog posts are rolling in from recent programs. Here are a few highlights:

Shaun Flynn Taps NPR Experience As New Zealand Video Blogger

Shaun Flynn, a biology/communications manager at American University, is telling the tales of New Zealand from a semester-abroad student’s perspective.

A former intern at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., Flynn was able to learn from some of the best radio storytellers in the world.

Now, with Flip camera in hand, Flynn’s bringing those storytelling skills into the visual medium as well, in this case about the Culture & Adventure Program, as shown above.

Stay tuned for more Flynn’s adventures at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s South Island.

Music Student Dancing, Playing In Melbourne

Sytske Hillenius and her friend attend an Australian Rules Football match in Melbourne.

Your toes will start tapping once you start reading the “Musical Adventures” blog of Sytske Hillenius, a College of Charleston student now attending the University of Melbourne and taking courses at the Victorian College of Arts.

Hillenius describes herself as “a violinist, fiddler, dancer, teacher and explorer journeying to learn, live and love life.”

Since beginning her blog last month, Hellenius has written descriptively about the flora and fauna of Cairns, “environmentally conscious” Australia, the Melbourne Zoo, an Australian Rules Football match, and going folk dancing three times in one week.

“Tonight, I went to a Celtic set dance with some of the young people that I met at the Old-Time Tea Dance,” she writes. “It was so much fun! It is at an old Irish pub not too far from my apartment. We danced a whole bunch of quadrilles on just about the smallest dance floor I have ever danced on!”

Roanoke College Student On Sporting Short Course: ‘It’s definitely an experience I’m never going to forget’

Sledding down the sand dunes to learn about sport? You bet.

The dune rides were just one of a number of sports-related excursions designed to teach Sarah DeWitt, a Roanoke College student, and other participants in “The Australian Sporting Industry” short course, about the variety of sporting industries in Australia.

DeWitt, a health sciences major, shared her experience in a series of five videos, including this segment about the conclusion of the four-week AustraLearn program.

It was the first time out of the country for DeWitt.

“Coming home from Australia is definitely a bitter-sweet experience,” she says.

Internship Blogger In Australia

Fiji’s New Video Blogger, Maryanne Sayles, Ready To Go

Maryanne Sayles, a California State University – Stanislaus business major now studying abroad for a semester at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, is ready to video blog her way through Fiji. Check out her introductory video here.

Related posts:

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Voting Underway For AustraLearn Alumnus For America’s Got Talent Contest

Cam Hodges, a Seattle resident and AustraLearn semester-abroad alumnus from July 2009, is a finalist in the America’s Got Talent competition on YouTube.

The winner will get a chance to play live on the AGT show. You can check out and vote for Cam Hodges’ submission here.

You will need to click on the America’s Got Talent link near the top left of his video and then go to the Voting Gallery on that link to select his photo with a “thumbs up”.

To learn more about Hodges, who is from Seattle, check out his Facebook page.

Student Blogging About New Zealand Adventures

Eva Darron, a student at The College of New Jersey who is studying at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand, is blogging about her experiences, including her attendance of the the New Zealand Culture and Adventure Program of AustraLearn.

She gives an interesting account on her “There and Back Again” blog of meeting and interacting with students from the Rotorua Boys High School during her Community Day, including students there reacted when she gave out U.S. coins.

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2. Student Snapshots: Bond University Awards Scholarships To AustraLearn Degree Abroad Students, CBC Radio Airs Segment On College Degree Transfer Programs
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MasterChef, one of Australia’s highest rated reality shows, recently featured the International College of Management, Sydney, (ICMS) an AustraLearn partner university.

MasterChef Australia taped an episdode recently at the International College of Management, an AustraLearn partner university.

The show, watched by 1.7 million viewers across Australia, taped an entire episode at ICMS with contestants split into blue and red teams and asked to prepare a three course meal of classic French cooking.

Visit Dailymotion to view the episode in three parts.

Tony Bilson, a top Australian chef, and Michel Roux , an international chef, mentored the teams as they cooked recipes from their cookbooks in the ICMS kitchens.

Once the cooking was over, ICMS hospitality students served the contestants’ dishes to the judging panel comprised of Matt Preston and renowned chefs Tetsuya Wakuda and Guillaume Brahimi in the ICMS Grand Dining Room.

Preston then revealed the blue team had won and all of the members of the red team now faced an elimination challenge.

View the photo above and other shots taken during the taping of the episode, which aired May 12, on the MasterChef web site.

Related posts:

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AustraLearn Koala Tim Tam Making Her Way Toward Independence

Tim Tam is more than 11 months old now, but still sticks very close to her momma.

At just over 11 months old, Tim Tam the AustraLearn koala is still developing her individual personality.

Now weighing 2.2 kg, the joey is still very attached to her mother, according to wildlife keepers at Rainforestation Nature Park in Cairns, Australia.

Tim Tam will develop more traits and characteristics of her own once she is weaned.

AustraLearn, which annually sends several thousand students from the United States and Canada to study abroad in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, adopted the baby koala (and her descendants) in part to raise awareness of the threat to the iconic Australian marsupial, which is in danger of becoming extinct in the next 30 years.

Tim Tam rests on her branch.

As part of the effort, AustraLearn made a donation to support Tim Tam, who is part of a colony at Rainforestation Nature Park, where AustraLearn students visit during the six-day Bridging Cultures Program.

New photos tell Tim Tam’s story best. Check them out.

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