Zelman Symphony capacity audiences of Mahler's epic Eighth Symphony - the "Symphony of a Thousand" - at the Melbourne Town Hall. In what was believed to be "a first" for an Australian Community Orchestra, the performances involved over 580 performers including an augmented Zelman Symphony of some 125 players led by Guest Concertmaster, Wilma Smith, Concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), and featuring many guest principal players from the MSO and other top orchestras and music institutions. David Macfarlane played the magnificent organ, a 370 voice choir was formed from nine community choirs, and an 80 voice children's choir involved students
A Thousand Suns and raps of "A Thousand Suns" wind up monochromatic". Jim Farber of The "New York Daily News" gave the album one star out of five, saying, "no fewer than 15 cuts crowd the tight 47-minute length of the CD, many of them fragments or, more accurately, sonic non sequiturs". Jamie Primack of "The Badger Herald" wrote, "there are at least five filler tracks that contain nothing more than noise and sound bites ... the full-length songs aren’t particularly daring or interesting". Fans of the band were equally polarized by "A Thousand Suns". Initial signs of the fans' division over the