Morning of music delights audience

Some 160 people filled Town Hall to enjoy a morning of music and raise more than $1500 for CanAssist. Grant Barton and Maz Rees again worked together for months to prepare a program arranged especially for the pipe organ and electone. Maz and Grant were just children when they met in Forbes, learning music together and performing in local eisteddfods. Today Maz has a degree in music composition and Grant has gone on to study in Japan and competed in the Yamaha Electone Festival. Their shared love of music still thrives and they debuted this Morning of Music in May 2025 to great local response. The concert features the modern electronic organ with all its capabilities, as well as the locally significant pipe organ custom made for the late Paul Coles and gifted to Forbes Shire Council. Maz and Grant moved between the two instruments, playing both solos on each and duets where the two compliment each other. The concerts bring classical and modern music together, this year drawing everything from Metallica's Nothing Else Matters to Sound of Music and Chariots of Fire. A change in layout, with the organ and electone on the "side" of the Town Hall, brought the audience closer to the performers and screens gave them more insight into the work the performers do across all the layers of keys and pedals. The concert provided a beautiful finale to the 2026 Galari River Arts Festival with music lovers only asked to make a donation to CanAssist for entry. While final figures were to be calculated, concert-goers generously donated more than $1200, with a further $500 plus raised from raffle tickets.