Music Review
Music Review
Wind Band 2012
Ceara Sutton-Jones
As the school year draws to a close amidst abandoned picnics, water-logged cricket squares and a weekend of flood warnings, it’s good to be able to look back on another busy musical year at BCS. The young music tour group which performed so successfully in Paris last summer with a major performance at Disneyland on Bastille Day returned to school in September with renewed enthusiasm and energy and have given us some memorable performances this year.
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2012
Esther Lee – Musician of the Year
Bowes concert
The Wind Band played at the Darlington Arena in October, rounding off the annual Gala Concert with the Mission Impossible Theme and the whole school year with a spirited performance of Hot Latin on Speech Day. After many years in the Wind Band in the clarinet section, we say goodbye and good luck to Sophie Evans as she moves on from school. The highlight of the year for the Jazz Band was the Summer Evening of Jazz in late June. Although not blessed with summer weather, the pupils performed to an excellent standard in the chill out rooms in the first half of the evening, and then after supper played superbly with Mr Donnelly’s quintet as the evening drifted towards the midnight hour. There was an excellent audience for the jazz evening and a good profit was made which will go towards next year’s music tour to the Rhineland. Just as school summer exams were finishing, the Junior Orchestra of no fewer than thirty-eight players gave an excellent evening concert in Big School. The orchestra’s repertoire included Meet the Flintstones, I’ll Stand By You and Mango Walk, and the concert also featured solos from Kerin Borer, James Terrill, Tom Crowther, Alice Whitehead, Kate Martin, Michael
Liu, Caitrin Robertson, Jamie Spratt, Ceara SuttonJones and Zak Day. Earlier in the year the Junior Orchestra also performed at the Gala Concert, as did the Chamber Choir singing Michael Hurd’s Rooster Rag and the String Orchestra Some Classic Bits and Pieces and an arrangement of the Gypsy Rover. As well as two numbers from the Jazz Band, there were also solos from James Robertson, Naomi Day, Regina D’Oyley and Esther Lee. Chorally it has been a year of consistently high standards and some excellent concerts and performances. The Chapel Choir chorister induction service in September saw Ivy Lai as Head of Choir, with Imogen Ridley, Harriet McHugh and Lauren CardenGrigg as deputies. Special services during the year included the new Bishop of Durham’s first Confirmation Service in March, Remembrance Sunday Service, the annual Founders’ Day Service, Old Barnardian Service and Festal Eucharist on Advent Sunday and for Easter-tide at the beginning of the summer term. In addition to this the choir gave a concert at Newbiggin Methodist Church and sang Evensong in York Minster in March. The annual Friends of the Bowes Museum Carol Concert was a sell out
The Barnardian Magazine