My name is Renee Crump. I’m 13 from Melbourne. I’m in year 7 at Camberwell High School. I have 2 younger siblings, a sister called Samantha and a brother called William. Sam’s in Grade 5 and Will’s in Grade 4. Sam plays the French Horn and Will plays the drums. My mum is a music teacher and a French Horn player, she teaches theory, French Horn, brass at some of the schools that she teaches at, and also takes some bands at the schools she works at. My dad works at a guitar factory in Box Hill and is a drum player in a band called Bad Elf.
I started playing the piano at about the age of 3 and a half and I still play now. I have done every AMEB piano exam up to grade 5 exams on piano last year, but I won’t be doing a piano exam this year. I started trombone about 5 years ago when I broke my wrist, and I’ve been lots of things since. Later in the year I will be doing my AMEB grade 6 trombone exam. At school I am playing percussion in the wind ensemble and that is a bit of a new experience for me because I have never learnt percussion ever and now I am playing it in the highest concert band at school.
Composition inspiration
The inspiration for the piece I wrote is from a piece I played in MYSWB called Hounds of Spring by Alfred Reed. We played this piece at one of the first concerts of the year. At the start of the piece there is a fanfare type of thing, and then it goes off into whatever the rest of the piece does. This was the first piece that made me realise that I am a decent musician and that I am talented and that all the years of practice that I’ve done has payed off.
A Meaningful piece to me
A meaningful piece to me is Tchaikovsky 5th symphony because it was my first proper orchestral piece that I’ve ever played. I played this in the Bishop Orchestra at the Victorian State Music Camp. In this piece I had to read tenor clef (which I don’t really read much of) so that was a challenge for me. The experience of playing a proper orchestral piece of work.