Busking festival’s talent comes forth

Sophie Sun plays the Chinese zither at the South Dunedin Busking Festival. Photo: Gregor Richardson.
Sophie Sun plays the Chinese zither at the South Dunedin Busking Festival. Photo: Gregor Richardson.
Hundreds of people enjoyed the inaugural South Dunedin Busking Festival on Saturday.

Founder and organiser Craig Waterhouse said he was pleased with the weather, the turnout, and the acts, most of them drawn from South Dunedin.

Half of the musicians were aged under 18 and there was a "wide variety of talent".

"The music judges were very impressed with the quality of talent from these young ones."

Mr Waterhouse visited Melbourne last year, where he chanced on a suburban busking festival and spoke to the organisers who advised him about how to run a similar event. He said 90% of the Melbourne acts were drawn from a 2km radius of that event, and "I think [our] one would be very close to that".

The festival was planned long before the shock news of the planned closure of the Cadbury factory, but the timing was fortunate.

"It was a good way to bring the community out in something positive, at the end of the week which had a lot of bad news.

"There’s a lot of people who work at Cadbury who are in the South Dunedin community."

People enjoyed Sophie Sun’s performance on the Chinese zither, a 2500-year-old classical Chinese instrument. The 14-year-old learned the instrument for three years before the family moved to New Zealand in 2014.

They initially lived in Wanaka, but moved to Dunedin. Her mother, Fang Wei, said she had been unable to find Sophie a zither teacher in New Zealand.

"It’s hard. Last year we went back to China, and she had some lessons."

Saturday was the second time the Logan Park High School pupil played the instrument in public.

Results:  music individual under 13: first place, Makayla Houpapa (10); music individual 13-18 years: first place, D’Angelo Wade; music individual open age: first place, Mig Smith; music group over 18 years: first place, Matthew Rhodes and Chris Butchard; music group under 18 years, first place, 2 Buskateers (Emily-Rose and Gracie Young).

eileen.goodwin@odt.co.nz

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