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Bablake School
Bablakecreative
MUSIC NON STOP!
Promising local talent and enthusiastic audiences – an overview of the flourishing music scene at Bablake A number of top professional artists have played in front of select and enthusiastic student audiences. Jane Taylor and Claire Toomey headlined in support of Ovacome while Broken Dolls helped raise £250 for Testicular Cancer. The Academy (now known as Elliot Minor) and effervescent local band The Satin Dolls have begun to build a following not just at Bablake but also nationally with their first official releases looming. Not only have we been able to host professional artists but we have also showcased some of the best Bablake performers. Jessica Blake
and Kirstie Logan have amazed audiences with their original compositions. Jessica is now representing the school in a regional music competition on June 5th at the Leamington Spa Centre while Kirstie is being courted by the music industry. The immensely popular Zain Ali (part of Vinni Valentino) has also continued to impress us. We are expecting Mr Hudson and the Library to perform next in our Acoustic Lunchtime series and a Big Gig is planned for Comic Relief. With Battle of the Bands early in the Summer Term, music and performance are flourishing.
From Weber to Webber... In a full programme in last year’s Autumn Concert, the orchestra started proceedings with selections from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The first half also included various wind ensembles and some excellent piano solos by Matthew Weeden, Nadine Minty and James Ross, before the closing item, Pachelbel’s Canon, sensitively played by violinists, Simone Willis, Laura Dean and Rachel Powell. The second half featured choral items by the Chorale and Chamber Choir which were interspersed with solos, Chris Walters on flute, Michelle Jie piano, Jess Blake singing Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu and a splendid performance on the clarinet by Paul Jordan of a set of Variations by Weber.
Where there’s a Will, there’s a way... A young and most definitely enthusiastic cast performed a version of The Tempest at Solihull Arts complex as part of the Shakespeare Schools’ Festival. The emphasis at the festival is always on making the text come alive, with minimal props and costume, and The Tempest gave great visual opportunities for the cast to create the storm that dramatically opens the play, and to variously ‘be’ spirits, harpies, gods, and smelly fish people (I think that you had to be there). It had been hoped to perform the play again at school this term, but there are so many trips out that it has proved impossible to assemble the cast. It is intended to find a date to present ‘The Tempest’ in school later in the Summer Term. House Drama Daisy Pulls It Off The Demon Headmaster Hot Cakes The Canterbury Tales Rehearsals for the House Drama Festival are well under way – it is a challenge now to find any time and any space when there are no students rehearsing for their production. The performances run from 8 May. A2 Drama and Theatre Studies The Upper Sixth drama group will be performing their play, ‘DNA’ by Dennis Kelly, as part of the National Theatre’s Connections project, at the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton on Thursday 12 April. Tickets are available form their theatre box office and it will be a good experience for the group to perform on a professional stage.