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A fitting tribute to remember Harry
Over the summer we were all stunned by the tragic news of
Harry’s death. Harry played a very large part in the musical life of the school, and it seemed a fitting tribute from the students to remember Harry with a celebration of the one thing he loved the most.
The Sixth Form Charity Committee decided the best way forward was to stage a concert to involve as many performances as we could, raising as much money as we could for the charity chosen by Harry’s parents – Papyrus.
There was an eclectic mix of musical items performed by those that were close to Harry and his family. The emotional highpoint of the evening was undoubtably the Show Choir singing ‘No-one But You’ by Queen, with a guest appearance by musical
theatre star Emma Barton. Emma had been a judge in the previous evening’s Inter-House Music and was so moved by Harry’s story that she offered to stay and perform.
Other notable performances included Harry’s house, Gravesend performing their rendition of Superstition by Stevie Wonder. The other members of Harry’s AS Music group were all represented; Priscilla Ho playing River Flows in You beautifully on Piano, Matt Wickes played a Saxophone duet with Bob Webb, Ben Ellis performed his compo-sition ‘Tumbling Pianos’ and Oliver Joseph sang Empty Chairs at Empty Tables from Les Miserables.
The second half opened with a devised drama piece based on Harry’s YouTube Channel NLP Minecraft. Louise Irvine, Will Sidi, Sam Hopkins and Alex Coppola created a visually stimulating
piece to a soundtrack created by Harry.
Huge congratulations should go to Louise Irvine, Alex Coppola, Sam Hopkins and Henry Mooney to name but a few of the committee who worked tirelessly to make the event such a success. We were delighted that so many of Harry’s family and friends joined us in the audience. The final total of over £5,125.94 was an outstanding amount raised for Papyrus and will surely just be the start of an even bigger fundraising campaign over the course of the year.
If you would like to donate please visit http://www.justgiving.com/HenryMooney/.
The ‘Unmissably Brilliant’ Harry Smith Concert
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INTER-HOuSE MuSIC COMPETITONWednesday 23rd October was taken over by our Inter-House Music competition. All Houses had been practising hard since the beginning of term and all of their hard work paid off!
Each House had a 15 minute rehearsal slot during the day to practise in the gym, where the competition took place. It was clear from the outset that the standard this year was go-ing to be extremely high.
At 3.45pm the competition began; the excite-ment and nervous energy in the room was clearly apparent.
Now to introduce our judges - Mr Ben Heathcote (a local musician and actor who has performed all over the world with legends such as Andrew Lloyd-Weber and Brian May); Ms Emma Barton (A West End performer whose credits in-clude Chicago and Annie, but who is most popularly known for her role as Honey Mitchell in East-enders) and finally; Mr Wadey (A proudly Cornish man and a teacher at Gordon’s school since 2000 who received the loudest round of ap-plause of all!)
Buckingham House opened the event with the highly sophisticated ‘Tumbling Pianos’, a piece written by Ben Ellis for his GCSE composition. This minimalist style mu-sic, performed on 3 Pianos (Ben Ellis, Philip O’Connor and Alex Coppola) and Flute (Matt Wickes), showed off the technical abilities of the group well and set the high standard for the event.
Windsor House were second to perform with Paloma Faith’s ‘New York’. The girls gave an impeccable performance with fabulous solos from Ellen Robinson and Sophie Chan as well as some clear and well-thought out harmo-nies. A confident and highly impressive perfor-mance!
Sandringham House was next up and certainly stole the show with their costumes! Looking the part, they performed ‘Let Me Go’ by Mav-erick Sabre. Their creative use of percussion instruments and their audience interaction was great as they had the whole crowd clap-ping along!
Kensington House was the first of our larger groups, with the maximum number of per-formers for One Republic’s ‘Counting Stars’. This well-co-ordinated performance showed
some lovely vocal harmonies as well as solos from a large proportion of the group; Eloise Young added to the piece’s atmosphere with her lovely Violin tone.
Balmoral House gave us the only medley of the afternoon moving seamlessly from Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen. Guitarists Rory Cracroft, Louis Mel-lor and Ollie Strange, along with saxophon-ists Hugo Hughes and Jack Bass and violinist Noah Sempala gave the piece a more interest-
ing arrangement; Henry Burnell delivered a fabulous Guitar solo whilst Michael Broom took the lead and wowed the audience with his fabulous skills on piano and vocals.
China House gave us another large group performance, with ‘Young Volcanoes’ by Fall Out Boy. Accompanied by Natalie Dear on Guitar, Jessica Brimfield and Teresa Stander kick started the piece with great solos as well as some successful harmo-nies later on. It was great to hear some of our new Year 7s take on the instrumental – Maisy Ellis and Emily Garner on Violin and Tia Jasani on Flute.
Gravesend then took the audience in a new musical direction with their performance of ‘Superstition’. With Will Hopkins on vocals, Henry Gray on Saxophone and Cody Moss on piano they certainly captured the essence of a Stevie Wonder performance!
Augusta House also took a large group ap-
proach, with Justin Timberlake’s ‘Mirrors’. The group was well-organised by Daniela Beck and accompanied by Wai Yan on Piano; there were lovely solos from Sophie Guida and Maddie Howell, showing off the range of their voices with some intricate melody lines.
Khartoum closed the show with a flawless ‘Radioactive’ by Imagine Dragons. Ollie Jo-seph and Colin Hutchings added a moment of comedy to the song by playing on the line ‘I’m breathing in the chemicals’; the audience were in stitches! Comedy aside, the musicality and confidence shown by the Khartoum musi-cians was outstanding.
With all Houses having performed, the judges were whisked away to make their decision leaving the contestants excitedly waiting, feel-ing proud of their performances.
After a short break, the judges returned with a few words for all the participants. The judges were clearly impressed and overwhelmed by the talent that all the students had shown; their words of advice were a clear ‘Keep it up, whatever you’re doing, keep it up!’
Mr Moss then announced the results in re-verse order, with the audience sitting on the edge of their seats. Third place went to… Kens-ington House – the huge cheer from the girls themselves showed how pleased they were to gain a position this year! In second place... Windsor House – even more cheering! And first place in the Inter-House music competi-tion goes to… Khartoum!
Congratulations and a huge well-done to all involved!
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Towards the end of the summer term, we were delighted to invite Tringham Preschool to Gordon's to help support their 'music' focus for the month. The three and four year olds made their way across the Recreation Ground to Gordon's for the session and were greeted by some very keen Gordon's musicians. Max Roffey kept everyone in check by issuing bugle calls for the starts and ends of sessions, whilst string players Eloise Young, Yasmin Taylor and Will Hopkins gave some lovely performances and Will even tried to squeeze his Cello under his chin to demonstrate the differences in size between a Cello and a Violin!
The central part of the session consisted of making percussion instruments. We did our bit for 'reduce, reuse, recycle' by using empty plastic bottles donated by Gordon's staff and filling them with rice, lentils or pasta. Each child decorated their shaker with personalised stickers and then we were ready to go. Next our woodwind players Matt Wickes, Josh Papworth, Bertie Lyhne-Gold, Zara Cracroft and Matilda Bradford played for the group, accompanied by our handmade percussion instruments.
Finally Mrs Heathcote led the group in some singing and the Gordon's students joined in most enthusiastically with 'The Wheels on the Bus' and ' The Animal Fayre'. The morning was rounded off by a well-earned drink and biscuit before the children headed back across the field shaking their instruments for all to hear!
The End of the Summer Term...TRINGHAM PRESCHOOL
We were privileged to be invited to London to perform at the Caledonian Club Summer Ball in June this year. The Caledonian Club, founded in 1891, is a private members’ Club situated in the heart of Belgravia, whose members are either Scottish or have a close association with Scotland. After a hectic journey through Friday night rush-hour traffic, we arrived in good time to get changed in the very exclusive library, complete with hidden doorways and to warm up with the Club's resident Piper, Ian King. Our job was to play outside the club for those members going to the Ball and it was really quite an unusual event marching up and down the pavement! Once dinner was announced we moved upstairs to pipe the guests through to dinner.
Having convinced Mr McCready that busking in central London could be saved for another day, we arrived home in good time ready for another busy day playing at West End Fete…
CALEDONIAN CLuB
Yet again, the sun shone for us on the day of the West End Fete. Gordon's Pipes and Drums were to lead the procession, and all the local community groups had put enormous amounts of effort into the floats and decorations. All the players did extremely well given the long walk around the village and the arena performance too. A big congratulations to Georgie Eccleshall for her first solo performance on the bass drum.
WEST END FETE
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Gordonian, Stephen Lines (1962-1965), has such good memories of playing in the band on Sunday parades that 48 years after leaving Gor-don’s he decided to write a slow march for the school. In-deed that’s exactly what he’s done and the school concert band will begin rehearsing ‘Gordon’s Slow March’ af-ter the summer break. The march is dedicated to the staff and students of the school and includes a slight Caledonian flavour together with passing references to ’Wings’ – the quick march of the Royal Engineers; the Corps to which General Gor-don famously belonged.
After leaving the school Ste-phen joined the Army as a musician. He attended the Royal Military School of Mu-sic (Kneller Hall) during 1967-68 where he studied french horn under Alf Cursue. Alf was a specialist 4th horn player who was a member of ‘God’s Own Quartet’ which included Dennis and Aubrey Brain. On completion of the course Stephen was ap-pointed principal horn of the regimental Band of the 2nd
Battalion Royal Anglian Regi-ment. He returned to Kneller Hall during 1975-1978 and, having passed his Bandmas-tership examinations, was appointed Bandmaster of 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment. Just 6-years later, because Army music at that time was suffering drastic cuts due to a Strategic De-fence Review, he decided to take voluntary redundancy.
Stephen subsequently re-trained and was appointed a member of the Directing Staff at the British Police Staff Col-lege, Bramshill where he be-came responsible for running Multi-Media Simulated Oper-ations Training for senior po-lice officers from across the world in ‘Critical Decision-Making under Stress’.Whilst associated with the Police he studied for a Mas-ters Degree in Police and Criminal Justice Studies and an Honours Degree in Psy-chology. Subsequently he was recruited by the Farnbor-ough-based Defence Evalua-tion Research Agency - now called QinetiQ - where he worked as a senior consult-ant within the Centre for Hu-man Sciences.
Stephen is semi-retired but, despite this, he still compos-es music virtually full time. He writes in various genres but sees himself in future concentrating on orchestral music and writing for the french horn – he has recently published his second horn concerto. When not compos-ing he can be found playing golf at Hartley Wintney Golf Club.
GORDON’S SLOW MARCH
The school Pipes and Drums, along with the band of the Royal Logistic Corps played at a Beating Retreat ceremony held at Gordon's School on behalf of the Army Benevolent Fund on Friday 21st June 2013. This was the first time that both bands had played together, and it gave us the rare chance to work with such a professional group of musicians who were in the same line of business as us.
The Pipes and Drums did a separate marching display and played a new medley of tunes of varying tempo. The ceremony culminated in the finale with a combined piece known as Highland Cathedral.
Preparation for the day did not allow a great deal of rehearsal time and occuring at the height of the exam season, attendance by key band members was at a premium, but I am extremely happy to report that we did an excellent job and the Director Music from the RLC Band was, as he put it, "...unbelievably surprised at the professionalism and musical ability of the school Pipes and Drums".
BEATING THE RETREAT
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We were blessed with some very fine weather on the evening of the Expressive Arts Evening. Just as well really, as two out of the three performances took place outside! The evening kicked off with the jazz ensemble, led by Jaz Moss performing a set outside the library. Inside the library a fine display of GCSE and A Level art was on show, and outside the catering team had done a superb job on the canapés. The evening then moved to the amphitheatre, where Mr Graham's drama group performed some excerpts from Romeo and Juliet. Finally, the audience moved into the Recreation Hall to hear a variety of musical items. The Concert band were in fine form, playing Skyfall from the latest Bond film and Hey Jude. Sophie Guida and Natasha Gerrard led the Show Choir in a stirring rendition of 'No-one but You' by Queen, followed by a very well-rehearsed version of 'Quiet' from the musical Matilda performed by Poppy Colloff and Erin King. Also in fine form were the string group, who despite missing some of their key GCSE and Sixth Form players due to exams, gave a fine performance of Karl Jenkins's Palladio.
ExPRESSIVE ARTS EVENING
Monday 24th June 2013 saw the band heading off to County Hall, Kingston to take part in the start of the Armed Forces Week celebra-tions on behalf of Surrey County. This is the second time we have been invited to this event and the band play in front of local dignitaries and representatives of the Armed Forces. It is a very moving and poignant ceremony but also highlights the great work that the men and women of all three services do in the interests of us all.
We are now looking forward to getting back into our newly refurbished band room and preparing for the new school year.
New Musical Ventures...
The Music Department is delighted to have started a new venture into LAMDA examinations. The London Academy of Music and Drama offer qualifications in public speaking, acting prose and poetry and debating, amongst others. These lessons are being offered to all year groups on the same basis and at the same cost as other instrumental lessons. Sixth Form students will also benefit from receiving a six week course during their open study sessions with the opportunity to take this further in a period 7 activity if they so wish.
Mrs Heathcote, our LAMDA teacher writes.... "What I love about the LAMDA process is that there is an opportunity to be judged on work you have prepared, to get feedback and to learn how to improve for the next exam. As you go through the grades, there is a great sense of accomplishment and a feeling that your hard work is being translated into something tangible. Whether or not the student is the next Daniel Radcliffe, Kate Winslet or Danny Boyle the students at Gordon's have the opportunity to express themselves and improve their self-esteem working in pairs or on their own. For the Sixth Form Public Speaking students they are already taking every opportunity available to put their presentation skills into practice... preparing them for life in the outside world!”
LONDON ACADEMY OF MuSIC AND DRAMA (LAMDA)
New students at Gordon’s had a musical slant to their first day of term this year when they attended the instrumental demonstration. There was a slight difference this year to previous years as students were able to have a go on many of the instruments we have on offer at Gordon’s. With the help of our visiting instrumental staff, different ‘stations’ were set up around the Recreation Hall; each station had a different instrument and students had a short taster on a variety of orchestral instruments as well as the Guitar, Drum-Kit and a mini vocal workshop.
The event sparked great interest and enjoyment and many new students, Year 7s in particular have now begun instrumental and vocal lessons at Gordon’s. New students have also shown enthusiasm for our extra-curricular ensembles which started rehearsals this week. The Show Choir had a great turn out at its first rehearsal and we’ve welcomed new students into Concert Band and under the Arches Band, as well as String Group and Woodwind Ensemble.
If you would like any more information about musical opportunities at Gordon’s please get in touch.
A MuSICAL WELCOME TO NEW STuDENTS
KINGSTON FLAG RAISING
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Gordon’s Musicians Perform in School…
Our lunch-time concerts got off to a flying start on Wednesday 18th September 2013 with several superb performances. These concerts are very informal and aim to give students the chance to perform in front of a small audience in a relaxed atmosphere. Kiran Evetts opened the proceedings and got the chapel rocking with his electric Guitar performance! Rebecca Luke performed Ma-donna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ on Flute and was fol-lowed by Victoria Howard singing ‘Mr Snow’ from Carousel. Erin King produced another great performance of ‘Quiet’ from Matilda before Cody Moss concluded the concert with a flawless and characterful version of ‘Autumn Leaves’ played on Trumpet. The au-dience enthusiastically showed their appre-ciation for all performances!
Our second lunch time concert of the term saw some of our more seasoned performers, but this time alongside some new faces. Ka-tie Beet gave a superb performance of ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid; this gave Katie the chance to test out the waters before singing this piece at Woking Music Festival later this term. Sophie Guida also gave her Woking Music Festival entry a try out in front of a smaller yet just as apprecia-tive audience, with ‘What it Means to be a Friend’. Sophie Armitt teamed up with Freya Anning to perform an Adele favourite for the first time; their voices certainly compliment-ing each other well. Ben Whatmore, one of our new Year 7s, performed one of his Grade 2 recorder pieces, and highly accurately he did this too! Andrew Milne, another of our new Year 7s, gave us a jazzy and enjoyable rendition of one of his Grade 4 exam pieces on Trumpet. Benjamin Cave also performed on Trumpet, sharing one of his Grade 5 piec-es with rousing success.
LuNCH-TIME CONCERTS
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ASSEMBLY MuSICMusic is becoming a larger feature of assemblies this year. Kiran Evetts, after his success in the lunch time concert, rocked the Chapel for a full week during September with different performances from Rock Legends including Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. Cody Moss also played in assemblies during October, performing different jazz standards on Trumpet, with his own improvised interpretations.
Our first Informal Concert of the year was held during the evening of Wednesday 16th October 2013 in the Recreation Hall. There were 19 students performing in total, with 9 of these performing for the first time. Vocalists and In-strumentalists of all styles and year groups were well represented.
Hannah Hailu started the evening with a won-derful performance of Shostakovich’s Waltz on Violin, as a duet with Mrs Darymple. Mi-chael Broom maintained this high standard of string playing later in the evening with his ex-tremely musical performance of ‘Debussy’s La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin’.Katie Beet was the first of our vocalists, produc-ing a stunning performance ‘Part of Your World’; Grace Cottage followed with a lively and truly entertaining performance of ‘Good Morning Bal-timore’. Other vocalists of the evening included Emily Bell with a lovely performance of ‘Castle on a Cloud’ from Les Miserables and Erin King performed ‘Play with your Food’ from Honk capturing the Cat character per-fectly! Beth Anning performed the heart-wrenching ‘Easy Terms’ from Blood Brothers, with the dialogue performed by Yasmine Sheehan and Lou-Lou Mattinson.
Annie Rose was the first of our GCSE musicians, perform-ing ‘Rachel and the Boys’ on Alto Saxophone, before being joined by Lauren Kemp for a Saxophone duet of ‘Imagine’.
Freddie Tilbrook then took the audience in a different mu-sical direction with Noel Gallagher’s ‘If I had a Gun’, before Helena Luke (Year 8) took us ‘back to Bach’ with a note per-
fect rendition on Flute of Bach’s Rondeau.
Other GCSE musicians included Rhaea Lee, per-forming one of her own songs and Lawrence Semper-White performing the beautiful ‘Di-venire’ by Einaudi. Victoria Howard produced a lovely, sincere performance of ‘Evergreen’ by Barbara Streisand before Sophie Chan wowed the audience with her performance of the 1st Movement from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in D.
Cody Moss was the first of three trum-peters of the evening, showing off his improvisation skills beautifully with the
jazz standard ‘Stella by Starlight’. Benjamin Cave and Andrew Milne performed later in the evening with their Trumpet exam pieces, both of which had a slight Bluesy twist!
Kiran Evetts closed the evening, after a swift technical set up, with a Muddy Waters favourite on electric guitar.
The evening was helped to flow smoothly with well-re-hearsed introductions from some of our 6th-form LAMDA students, Alex Coppola, Charlie Clemmow and Aidan Perry.
INFORMAL CONCERT
Concert Band and Soloists entertained parents and students at the Year 7 Information Evening on Monday 16th September. With only a short rehearsal time since the start of the year, Concert Band brushed up two previous favourite numbers from the summer term, Skyfall and Hey Jude. Both pieces were performed well and showed off our developing Brass section nicely! In between these items, Rebecca Luke gave a sprightly rendition of ‘Circus Pony’ on Flute, and Erin King and Poppy Colloff brought a touch of drama to the evening with a captivating performance of ‘Quiet’ from Matilda.
PERFORMANCE AT THE YEAR 7 INFORMATION EVENING
ExAM CONGRATuLATIONSCongratulations to Bene Robinson on passing his Grade V Acoustic Guitar Exam.
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… And Outside of School
On the evening of Sunday 29th September, twelve lower school singers joined Mrs Brazendale and the choirs of Chobham St Lawrence School and Coworth-Flexlands at a Songs of Praise service in St Lawrence Church to launch the Chobham Music Festival. The hour long service included some well-known hymns and the congregation joined in with some hearty singing. The school singers joined together to perform two hymns: ‘Think of a World’ and ‘Shine Jesus Shine’, which were both very well received. Thanks to all the parents who transported pupils to and fro and to all the new singers who have got involved so eagerly.
On Friday 4th October 2013, as part of the Chobham Music Festival, 12 student singers and a small selection of the Pipes and Drums band went down to St Lawrence Church to perform alongside local primary schools in front of each other as well as parents and relatives.
The Pipes and Drums gave a majestic opening to the morning by playing as students from the primary schools entered the church. The singers then started off the official concert with an emotional performance of Queen’s ‘No-one But You
(Only the Good Die Young)’, with Natasha Gerrard and Victoria Howard taking on some solos in the opening before Sophie Guida took on the main solo part. Erin King and Poppy Colloff then reprised their duet of ‘Quiet’ from Matilda; just as enjoyable and entertaining as when first heard! The drummers marched through the church later in the concert, and entertained everyone with the highly skilled ‘Drummers Meeting’, to a rapturous round of applause.
Valley End Infants, Coworth-Flexlands and St Lawrence Cof E Primary School all gave
very enjoyable performances, especially with homemade kites being waved during ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ from Mary Poppins!
The concert concluded with a joint performance (although only ever separately rehearsed!) of ‘When I Grow up’ from Matilda. Gordon’s students (Beth Anning, Katie Beet, Poppy Colloff, Anna Dunbar and Erin King) took some solos in the opening, before being joined by all the primary school students. It certainly was a fabulous way to end a lovely morning’s concert!
SONGS OF PRAISE
CHOBHAM SCHOOLS’ PROM
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As part of the Chobham Schools’ Prom, Gordon’s students were invited to take part in a Samba workshop. Mrs Brazendale and Mrs Blaine took two mini-buses of our drummers, both from the Pipes and Drums Band as well as some of our Drum-Kit stu-dents.
We learnt about the different Samba instruments and how they should be played, as well as some of the typical Samba rhythms. Some of them were a lot more complicated than they first appeared! We finished with a small performance of every-thing we’d learnt; an enjoyable morning was had by all!
The Gordon School Drummers were the opening act at the event to launch the BBC’s ‘Children in Need 2013’ called ‘An Evening with the Stars’.
They gave a dazzling performance with uV lighting and fluorescent drumsticks to an audience of 1,000 invited dinner guests at the Battersea Evolve venue.
Following the afternoon dress rehearsal, the Band was delighted to watch the Street Dance Group ‘Ruff Diamond’ go through their
paces with back flips and somersaults.The Drummers gave their usual professional and polished per-formance at the opening of the event. They then watched ‘Ruff Diamond’ perform and listened to Terry Wogan’s opening speech. Just before leaving, the band were thrilled when the compere Rick Edwards (former T4 presenter) came out to the coach to person-ally thank them and have some photos taken with the Band. More information on the event can be seen by typing ‘BBC Children in Need an Evening with the Stars’ into Google.
CHOBHAM SCHOOLS PROM SAMBA WORKSHOP
GORDON’S SCHOOL DRuMMERS PLAY AT THE LAuNCH OF BBC CHILDREN IN NEED 2013
‘...they gave a dazzling performance’
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During November, several Gordon’s students were en-tered into Woking Music Festival, and all performed extremely well!
Katie Beet was the first of our students to attend Woking Music Festival on Thursday 7th November, and what a start it was! Katie performed Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ in the Vocal Pop/Jazz class at the united Reform Church. Although a small class, there was some very tough competition; all competitors per-formed quite complex pieces very well. After tensely waiting to hear results, the adjudicator gave all competitors very positive feedback; he then awarded Katie join first place!
Friday 8th November was a busy night of soloists and duets in the vocal classes. Katie Beet, Grace Cottage and Erin King all performed in the under 13 years Musical Theatre class, with Sophie Guida singing in the under 15 years Musical Theatre class. Katie sang a sincere and heartfelt rendition of Part of Your World from ‘The Little Mermaid’; Grace became an audience captivating 1950s leading lady for Good Morning Balti-more from ‘Hairspray’; Erin embodied the cat from the show ‘Honk’ perfectly for Play with Your Food’. Sophie gave another sincere and profound performance with What it Means to be a Friend. Erin King then came back to the stage, this time with Poppy Colloff to perform in the under 19 years Vocal Duet class, with Quiet from Matilda. All our students received ‘commended’ performances; Grace Cottage achieved 2nd place, as did Erin King and Poppy Colloff for their duet!
Our vocal entries at the festival finished with Show Choir per-forming at the H. G. Wells Centre on Tuesday 12th November. They performed four pieces in total; I See the Light and Make
Me a Light for the under 13 years School Choirs class and No-One But You and Angel’s Carol for the under 15 years. All the girls performed extremely well; the adjudicator commented positively on things that the choir had been trying hard to put into practice such as keeping their focus during the solos and lovely legato phrasing. The feedback was lovely to hear and all the students were incredibly supportive of each other as well as the other schools competing. Being awarded ‘highly com-mended’ in both classes, as well as 2nd place was the icing on the cake; a great evening was had by all!
Our instrumentalists were also represented at the festival. Eloise Young and Hannah Hailu performed in the under 15s Duo class at Christchurch. They were extremely well rehearsed on their chosen piece, ‘Waltz’ from Five Pieces for Violins and Piano by Dimitri Shostakovich. The adjudicator recognised their strong
sense of ensemble and the musical-ity with which they performed, giving them a highly ‘com-mended’ for their performance and first place!
Erin King took advantage of the drama classes at the festival and per-formed in the Solo Acting 10-12 years class. She performed The Cheshire Cat monologue from
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis, achieving a distinction from the adjudicator and first place!
Cody Moss represented us in two piano classes – Jazz/Pop Inter-mediate and Jazz Improvisation playing Misty by Erroll Garner in the first class and Ladybird by Tadd Dameron in the second. His performances were simply superb; the adjudicator commented on how ‘at home’ Cody appeared, both on stage as well as with his chosen style of music. Cody won both his classes with distinction!
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Gordon’s students gain musical inspiration from hearing others:
On Friday 20th September, 12 students went to see the ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. There was a mix of excitement and ap-prehension amongst the group; we’d heard rumours that they were very good (why else would they have ‘of Great Britain’ as part of their name?) but did not know what to expect! They cer-tainly lived up to their title.
We were thoroughly entertained with a whole variety of musical numbers ranging from modern favourites such as Adele to older numbers that were unknown to some students. The majority of performances were popular songs accompanied by the dif-ferent sizes of ukuleles but they did also perform some orchestral music in the form of Danse Maca-bre by Saint-Saens (possibly more widely known as the Jonathan Creek theme tune). The anec-dotes and jokes in between songs were just as entertaining as the pieces themselves.
The encore of the evening ended with an outstanding mash up of each performer’s favourite song; the music of Handel, Sinatra, The Fugees, Gloria Gaynor and The Eagles was superbly and flaw-lessly mixed together in a jaw-dropping performance! We will certainly be looking out for future performances near West End!
Following a very successful trip to the Menuhin School in February, we were pleased to be able to book tickets to another of their showcase concerts in September. Students at the Menuhin School are prodigiously talented musicians, and can start attending the school from the age of 7. The school only has 76 students, so it was fascinating for Gordon's students to compare and contrast the different school experiences.
The first performer was 11 year old Coco Tomita who gave a sprightly rendition of Fiocco's Al-legro, playing with a Barqoue bow. Whilst this performance was in itself very impressive, it was soon superseded by some truly awe-inspiring playing by 16 year old Sao Soulez Lariviere playing Il Palpiti by Paganini and his 17 year old sister Cosima playing Wieniawski's Fantasie brilliante on themes from Gounod's Faust.
We all concluded that it was an inspirational evening of music making. It was lovely to be able to be accompanied on the trip by our string teacher Susie Dalrymple and to have some well-established string players and also a new year 7 pupil on the minibus too. We hope to continue our relationship with the Menuhin School over this academic year.
On a beautiful autumnal day, four intrepid composers (Eloise Young - Yr 10, Theo Hughes and Rebecca Luke - Yr 11 and Matthew Wickes - Yr 13) set off to the Menuhin School in Cobham to take part in a composing workshop. This was the introductory session of what will become a three part series, where the pupils learn skills in composition, get to try out ideas and make a final recording of their piece.
The workshop was led by Head of Composition, John Cooney. He guided the pupils through the very basic of composition, reminding them how inspiration for composition can come from many places; people, the natural world, other geographical locations and so on. We spent some time exploring the ways of developing musical material so that the pupils had some ideas to use once they returned to the classroom.
After a short break, a string quartet of students from the Menuhin School played two move-ments from the Benjamin Britten String Quartet No. 3. It was a very technical piece and John guided us through it, breaking down sections so that we could hear the various string techniques such as pizzicato and tremolo.
Feeling inspired, it was time for lunch. Immediately after we were invited to the lunchtime concert at the Menuhin Hall, where students from the school played pieces they are preparing for public performance. Three out of the four Gordon's students had not been to the Menuhin School before, and it was fair to say that they were blown away by the virtuos-ity of the playing from students who, in many cases, were younger than themselves.
We are looking forward to going back in January to try out musical ideas with the Menuhin students. We will return in March to make final recordings of the piece.
uKuLELE ORCHESTRAMENuHIN SCHOOL
MENuHIN SCHOOL COMPOSITION WORKSHOP
MUSIC NewSletter p11NOVeMBer 2013 [email protected]
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