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Droylsden Wakes - High Quality MP3 - 410K (approx. 80 second download)

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Droylsden Wakes - Low Quality MP3 - 70K (approx. 14 second download)

News

The "best-ever" Olympics is over, and thank goodness for that! I was very fortunate in that all the music I wrote was used in either the opening or closing ceremony, sometimes both, and sometimes more than once. I also conducted several items with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the opening - all the pop songs (oh joy oh rapture) and my own fanfares. For the sake of the record, here is a list of my music played:

Opening Ceremony

Advance Australia Fair (national anthem arrangement)
Games 2000 Fanfares 1, 2 & 3

Closing Ceremony

Olympics Fireworks (twice)
Olympic Fanfare (twice)
Games 2000 Fanfare 1
Games 2000 Fanfare 2 (twice)
Games 2000 Fanfare 3

The Anthem and one of the fanfares are also on the official CD. My wife Emma and I had tickets to the closing ceremony, and were pleasantly surprised to hear the Fireworks music played complete during the entrance of the athletes, as well as at the end.

There were some disappointments; I was not alone amongst the composers and conductors who felt our contributions were ignored by the press and television coverage. Also the television sound was very poor, particularly at the closing ceremony. Channel 7 had a direct feed from the (very expensive) sound control room, yet they could hardly have done worse if they had hung a single microphone from the overhead blimp!

It was a great opportunity, nevertheless. Please note that the Olympic Fireworks is already arranged for wind band although I will not list it until I have sorted out the title. I need written permission from the IOC to use the word "Olympic". The other fanfares will probably also be available in due course.