A fantastic week of Music

What a fantastic week we’ve had in the Music Department. On Monday, Chamber Choir represented Gateway for the second year running at the finals of the Barnardo’s National Choral Competition at the Royal Festival Hall.

Last November, Mrs Izard submitted a recording of the choir to be considered for the competition and heard in February that out of hundreds of choirs from all over the country, Chamber Choir had been selected to take part in the final on 12th March. There were another seventeen schools in their category – age 12 and under, and seven choirs in the under 18 category. The children rehearsed twice a week right up to the day of the competition and worked incredibly hard to perfect and polish their performances. The competition itself took place throughout the day, and after a busy afternoon at the London Aquarium, there was a gala concert in the evening to prepare for, when all the choirs came together to sing en masse and as individual choirs.

Singing on the stage of the Royal Festival Hall was an amazing experience and the children did Gateway proud – they put every ounce of energy into their performance and could not have sung better -they were truly fabulous. The gala concert in the evening was attended by an audience of around 1,500. All the choirs sang two songs as a massed choir and each individual choir was able to perform one of their competition songs. We sang ‘Pure Imagination’ from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, beautifully introduced by Ali R. The winners of the competition were announced at the end of the concert, and although we didn’t win, the experience of taking part in such a prestigious event was something to treasure. Chamber Choir will repeat their performance at the Bellevue Southern Schools Music Festival on Monday 19th March – a musical extravaganza for eight schools from the Bellevue group. We’re very excited to be taking part.

Here is a video of the Chamber Choir singing at the National Choral Festival.

On Wednesday, we had our last music tea of the term. Twenty five instrumentalists took part, and it was great to hear such a range of instruments played so confidently – trumpet, flute, guitar, piano, violin and drum kit. As ever we had a super range of musical styles from Bach to Bernstein. It was lovely to hear some newcomers – some of the children have been learning for a very short time but rose to the challenge and did themselves proud. It was the perfect opportunity to listen to some of our more accomplished players as well as two of our ensembles – trumpet club and orchestra. What a fitting ending to what has been a very musical week!

There’s a lot to look forward to next term. We will be holding our annual Summer Concert which will be a showcase for all the choirs (including staff choir) as well as the instrumental ensembles (recorder group, trumpet club, orchestra) and Year 6 will be performing ‘The Jungle Book’ at the Elgiva Theatre in Chesham a on Wednesday 4th and Friday 6th July. We will keep you informed about tickets to what promises to be a great performance.