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Bushfire Relief Concert


2020-02-07

Amongst Box Hill Institute's accomplished staff is Icehouse's leading guitarist and backing vocalist, Paul Gildea. Paul is our Academic Course Manager for the Bachelor of Applied Business in Music Industry but you may know him as a member of the ARIA Hall of Fame or from Icehouse's hit songs, Great Southern Land, Miss Devine, and Hey Little Girl.

Alongside his band members, Paul is performing at Fire Fight Australia, a concert for national bushfire relief on Sunday 16 February at the ANZ stadium in Sydney. Celeste Barber, who has raised over $50 million for the Australian bushfire crisis, will host the concert.

Since Icehouse headlined the Sydney Sound Relief Concert in 2009, the band has been touring actively and were approached by the promoters, TEG Live, a US company, to perform for Fire Fight Australia.

According to Paul, Box Hill Institute has been very supportive of the band's participation in the national relief concert. He said, "I think it's a great that staff in a performance faculty are supported to play at these kind of events and extra important given the cause.

"We did two nights of Zoo Twilights last weekend and the Zoos Victoria CEO told us that the estimate of fauna loss at one billion animals was very conservative. Given the loss of life, land, property and stock and the resulting highlighting of the climate crisis, I feel very passionate about this opportunity to help," he said.

Apart from the after party, Paul is looking forward to reaching out to as many people and hopefully raising more funds. "This is OUR chance to help. i'm hoping to get a passing shot in also but stay tuned," he says.

As a long term musician, Paul advises his students to practice, persevere, take risks with networking and always saying yes to gigs even if you aren't ready. He said, "Get prepared, be nice to work with, learn some resilience and patience and love the opportunity you've been given. We're a lucky breed!"

Fire Fight Australia will feature Queen, Alice Cooper, KD Laing, Hilltop Hoods, John Farnham, Baker Boy, Guy Sebastian, Jessica Mauboy, Delta Goodrem, Peking Duk and a number of other national and international artists including Icehouse.