By Charlene Macaulay
This 17-year-old pianist is gearing up for the performance of a lifetime.
Tarneit’s Ivanka Fernando will be performing at the Melbourne Recital Centre next month after being selected to participate in the Top Class Music concert.
Top Class is an initiative of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority that features the work of students who received very high grades for their VCE performance examinations in 2018.
Ivanka, who completed year 12 music last year as an accelerated subject, said she had never heard of Top Class before receiving an invitation.
“I was slightly shocked when I received the email,” she said.
“I didn’t realise it was such a big deal.”
The year 12 Thomas Carr College student first started playing when she was eight and found a natural talent and affinity for music.
Ivanka says she often plays without sheet music and has been known to make up her own compositions.
“If I think of a chord progression in my head I would run over to the piano and try all the chords out and [determine if] that’s a good sequence of chords and then I make it into a song,” she said.
Ivanka said while her music was inspired by jazz artists, including Diana Krall, Eliane Elias and Dave Brubeck, when she was younger, she is now influenced by more “funky, gospel, RnB” artists such as Alicia Keys and Earth, Wind and Fire.
