Wednesday 2 May 2012 - St Josephs College Geelong, My Chef Mike, Marysville (#44)

This week we substituted our normal Tuesday practice with a special session at My Chef Mike's (operated by soprano pan player Mike Jaegar) at Marysville Central. This was to coincide with a visit to Marysville by Year 12 students from St Joseph's College from Geelong. The boys were on an excursion to Marysville to study the meaning of the term "resilience".

After a great dinner provided by Mike and his staff, Pans on Fire played some songs, we described some of the history of Pans on Fire and band members spoke about how the band had helped them in their recovery from the 2009 bushfires. We then invited the students to take part in a short training exercise, where they learned the fundamentals of playing the pans. They took to this enthusiastically, with each student receiving initial instruction from one of the band members. After 20 minutes, they were playing a very recognisable version of "Lennox's Reggae", and having a great time. Pans on Fire then finished with a lively rendition of Brazil. To see the students and teachers dancing to Brazil in a joyous and effervescent manner made the evening even more worthwhile than it had been till then. We hope they enjoyed the evening as much as we did, and learned another definition of "resilience".