The South East Primary Schools’ Music Festival has hit the stage for the 33rd year at the Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre.

The festival started in 1988 and is a series of concerts that incorporates more than 500 primary school children from 25 schools across the South East ranging from Mount Gambier to Keith.

The choir is supported on each of the four nights by a 35-piece orchestra consisting of Mount Gambier locals conducted by Laura Small.

The festival is part of the Festival of Music offered right across the state, both in the city and in regional centres which aims to offer choir singing to all primary school children.

South East Primary Schools’ Music Festival Musical Director Shylie Harrison said the series of concerts aimed to promote and develop the arts for school children in the South East region, giving them an opportunity to perform in a festival of massed choirs.

“The choir repertoire is selected from a range of existing music and every year they commission a local Australian artist to write a commissioned work specifically and uniquely for the festival,” Ms Harrison said.

“This year the commissioned artist is Adelaide based Glyn Lehmann who has written music for the festival previously.

“This year his commissioned work is called ‘water is life’ which is a bird’s eye view of how important water is to our state, given that we are the dry state on the driest continent in the whole world and how the water activates so much of our flora and fauna right across the state.

“The idea of the piece is the audience are taking the ride of a pelican as it flies across our state observing the impact of water across all of our regions.”