cranleigh-matters-issue-29

Cranleigh Matters The Cranleigh School Newsletter Issue No 29 Winter 2007 www.cranleigh.org

Cranleigh School, Cranleigh Surrey GU6 8QQ Telephone 01483 273666

Cranleigh School's ÂŁ9.5 Million Academic Centre Takes Shape The foundations have been laid and the steel frame erected for the new Academic Centre which is due for completion in October 2008. The Centre will accommodate Science, Mathematics and Modern Languages teaching. Nearly half of today's undergraduates studying these disciplines come from independent schools and Cranleigh believes it essential that the independent sector continues to support these crucial subject areas.

Before the foundations were laid it was necessary to demolish the 1970s Physics block so that the new building can link into the School's Emms block, named after a former Headmaster. One of the most striking features of the design, by architects Pringle, Richards, Sharratt, will be a huge covered court at its heart, a third of which will be filled by a lecture theatre with the rest providing an inspirational place for meetings, quiet reading and reflection.

The Cranleigh Foundation This year Cranleigh has also launched the Cranleigh Foundation, an independent charity which exists to support future capital projects at both Cranleigh and Cranleigh Prep School, but, crucially also, to achieve meaningful links between the School and its wider community. The scheme is particularly committed to funding bursaries and scholarships for local pupils, the aim being to widen access to the education Cranleigh School offers, regardless of parental ability to pay the fees. Details of Awards currently available to boys and girls aged 11+, 13+, and 16+ can be found via the Cranleigh School website www.cranleigh.org or via email: foundation@cranleigh.org.

Head, Guy Waller, comments, "The Cranleigh Foundation is a hugely significant initiative and underlines our commitment to widen access to the special opportunities offered by a Cranleigh School education. Schools like ours must never stand still and, with support from the Foundation, our aim is to move straight on after the Academic Centre project with ambitious plans for an Art and Design School, which will lead on from the current parallel project, the Woodland Workshop, being built on the principles of 'carbon neutral' sustainable development. I am delighted to announce that David Johnston has recently been appointed as full-time Director of the Foundation."

David (an LSE graduate) worked as a city trader in London, New York and Tokyo and now lives in Cranleigh. He has a son at the Senior School and two at Cranleigh Prep School. David adds, "I am honoured and delighted to be undertaking the roles of Cranleigh Foundation Director and Director of Development. The enthusiasm for development of facilities within the two schools is very evident, but co-existing with this is the very real desire to fund bursaries for local children who might otherwise be unable to meet the fees. The exciting challenge is to raise capital for these two objectives."

WEB-SITE Some articles in this newsletter appear in a fuller version on the web-site. For the latest news go to www.cranleigh.org

Baptist Church Welcomes Young Musicians On the evening of Friday 12th October The Reverend Orlando Saer welcomed over 80 young musicians from Cranleigh on behalf of a packed Cranleigh Baptist Church. Members of the Church's congregation joined with staff and parents of the School (some of whom had driven from as far away as Windsor) to enjoy a concert of 18 varied items. Orlando announced that the Baptist Church was 'proud of its links with its wonderful neighbour' and spoke of the special bond with Cranleigh School Chapel, mentioning that several members of staff and pupils were also regular members of his congregation.

The music was enhanced by the generous acoustic of the new church, which has been finished for only about three months. A retiring collection was taken to contribute to the second phase of building, converting the old church.

Director of Music, Marcus Pashley, replied that 'It was a delight to give a concert in this lovely new church building' and among the performances none seemed more appropriate for the setting than an aria from Bach's 'St John Passion' sung by Tom Chevis. The backdrop of the large but beautifully simple wooden cross helped convey the calm spirituality of the music.

Also on display (as well as seasoned performers such as trombonist Ed Griffiths) were the talents of Cranleigh School's new September intake, including Chloe Allison playing Malcolm Arnold's clarinet Sonatina and Carole Date Chong playing a Handel violin sonata movement. The audience gave a particularly enthusiastic ovation to treble Tom Hollister's powerful rendition of 'The Holy City'.

The 18 voices of the hand-picked Chamber Choir added Parry to the Stanford they had given us two weeks before under new director Toby Moschard. The Chapel Choir (over 60 singers) sang in Russian and Spanish (as well as English) and the concert ended in lively style with the Big Band under Bob Wilson almost achieving dancing in the aisles as the audience swung to numbers by Vernon Duke and Glen Miller.

After nearly two hours of music-making Orlando Saer thanked Cranleigh for 'lending us their star musicians and giving us an absolute treat'.

Chamber Concert The traditional first pupil concert of the year (21st September in the MMS) showcased the talents of Music Scholars from all year groups.

Members of the new IVth Form made sensational debuts, with no sign of nerves in front of a large audience. Chloe Allison played Weber's Concertino for Clarinet with great beauty of tone, and equally remarkable, given the intrinsic difficulty of the French horn, was Peter Westcott's spirited rendition of the famous Rondo from Mozart's 4th Concerto. Paul Gallagher played a 'cello piece by Squire with an aptly rustic spirit.

Sam McCagherty played a sonata movement by Beethoven and brought out the contrasting moods of the piece while retaining the motoric drive vital to this composer. Fred Hickman contrasted this with a moody 'Mumuki' by Piazzolla; his emotional involvement in the piece was most engaging. He is a born performer.

Tom Chevis, in a Bach aria, brought a true spiritual calm, to his singing (in German) by heart. Jocelyn Waller gave a memorised rendering of Grieg's 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen' which really whetted our appetites to hear her in his concerto next term. Tory Sawyer's playing of the slow movement of the Mendelssohn E minor concerto had so many ravishing moments in her affectingly-phrased rendition. A wonderful peace was achieved to end the evening with the 15-strong Chamber Choir under Toby Moschard in Stanford's 'The Blue Bird.'

It seemed as if this hour opened a door into a whole year of more wonderful music-making at Cranleigh.

Cranleigh Equalise School Debate Series Three UVth historians and their supporters were warmly welcomed

by Glebelands School for the second contest in the biannual History Debate series between the two schools. Anna Ward, JJ Bee and Alice Bryant passionately and successfully defended the motion that 'We have a moral duty to intervene in foreign tyrannies.'

The event took place on Monday 8th October in Glebelands' newly refurbished Learning Resource Centre and was attended by students, staff and parents of both schools. Sue Doughty, former Liberal Democrat MP for Guildford, was the presiding judge.

The Glebelands team of Head Boy Martin Thompson, Sara Wells and Rachel Tresman, spoke with courage and conviction, playing devil's advocate for the purpose of great debate. Martin made several significant and well-argued comments, while Sara spoke with eloquence and a great deal of insight. Rachel did a very professional job, summing up and responding to points from the floor. The Cranleighans spoke with passion and purposefully set out to convince the audience that they were right to support the statement. Anna opened the debate by making the moral case for humanitarian intervention. She did this by referring to some heart-wrenching examples from Rwanda. JJ followed by concentrating on the practical argument for intervention. No two democracies, he argued, have ever gone to war with one another, therefore spreading democracy around the world can only be a good thing. Alice summed up and bravely parted from her notes as she tried to tie up the many interesting and sometimes quirky observations contributed by the audience.

Sue Doughty had the unenviable task of weighing up the arguments and considering the prowess of both teams. She commented that "It was a difficult topic; many books have been written on this subject with no final conclusions being agreed." Indeed she herself has been vexed on this issue. She voted for intervention in Afghanistan but against the Iraq War. It was a carefully-made decision but, with her extensive debating knowledge, Sue awarded the victory to Cranleigh School with a final score of 27.5 to 30. Congratulations to the Cranleigh team who did the School proud and evened the score with Glebelands. We look forward to the next round of debate later in the year.

JDC

House Performance From the all the hype that surrounds the annual House Performance, any non-Cranleighan would be forgiven for being somewhat surprised at the level of commitment and the passion that goes into it. Months ahead the songs are fought over, dances are choreographed, and tunes are arranged and rearranged. In the weeks leading up to the competition, every performer must accept that their liberty will no longer be theirs to dispose of as they choose: every spare moment must be spent rehearsing.

Cheers for the respective Houses (as well as the chants for certain members of Common Room) resonated around the School as the Loveday part song took to the stage with a polished and professional performance of 'Browneyed Girl'; for their size they made an unbelievably strong and harmonious sound. This was soon followed by North's 'What Would You Do', a very emotional rendition, in which they separated the performers into different groups to particularly impressive effect. Next onto the stage was East. A large group sang 'Higher and Higher' with five main soloists supported by different harmonies from the backing groups; the constantly shifting dynamics of this piece were especially impressive.

Cubitt added a very dramatic version of Bill Withers' 'Lean on Me'. I know from experience that an incredible amount of work was put into this performance, and I am told that the end result relied strongly on the sense of melodic unity that was created by almost half of the performers singing duets or solos or harmonies, not to mention the somewhat original costumes! Immediately after this came the IVth Form dances. First was Cubitt, with a rhythmic performance to Pink Floyd's 'Proper Education', their uniform-based costumes contributing to the strong sense of rhythm.

North, dancing to a compilation, wowed the audience with their gymnastic efforts, as well as some visually exciting choreography. Following this was Loveday, with another medley which was full of movement, both entertaining and energetic, especially when combined with their bright costumes.

Last of the dances was East. Set to the James Bond theme tune, the dancers all wore mime masks. Much commented on was how in time all the performers were, as well as the spectacular 'moon-walking' solo.

After repeats of all the acts, the adjudicators retired to assess the evening, while the audience was treated to an electrifying rendition of 'Numb', performed by Hannah Smoker, Gayle Telford, Joss Waller and Joe Rawnsley.

The impatient audience then finally received the results they had been waiting for: Cubitt winning the part song, followed by East and East topping the IVth Form dance with Loveday second.

Therefore East were the winners of the whole evening, but congratulations must also go to all the performers, particularly those who spent their time arranging the songs and dances.

All the winners were absolutely ecstatic and the ensuing celebrations for both participants and audience ensured that it was a night to remember!

Hannah Coleridge (LVI)

The Chalk Circle The Michaelmas term School Play marked the debut as director by Head of Theatre Studies Andrew Mulligan.

His production of Brecht's 'The Chalk Circle' ran from 7th-9th November in the VCT and will live in the memory as one of the most moving evenings of theatre at Cranleigh in recent years.

Much of this was down to the imagination as well as the skill of the director: cutting the text sensitively helped clarify the story but also set a challenge of switching the audience's emotions in some very short scenes. Some will have been surprised by how it was possible to maintain the Brechtian hallmarks of staging (such as the use of narrators, placards and actors doubling parts) and still exploit the theatre's power to bring audience members to tears.

The message of the play is that of the Old Testament story of Solomon's judgment: two rival mothers are asked to pull their child out of the chalk circle and the impoverished Grusha is too afraid of hurting the child she has looked after since it was abandoned as a baby. The powerful and rich Governor's Wife, however, has no qualms about mutilating the child she abandoned. Kate Cowdrey as Grusha rose to the challenge of the central role and her beautiful innocence and tender love formed the heart of the play.

Grace Cole-Hawkins was the perfect foil, giving an arrogant hauteur to the scene in which she is more concerned to pack her expensive dresses when taking flight than to take her own child.

The baby was represented by one of Graham Harris's cleverly naive cut-out props, which in turn reflected Peter McNiven's inspired designs based on drawings by 5-and 6-year-old children.

This made the appearance of Cranleigh Prep School pupil Adam Duffen extraordinarily touching as the prop became flesh and blood. His chasing the circles of light on the stage was one of many technical devices from Chris Wilson and his team which, along with the haunting music, breathed extra magic into the production. Adam's delivery of Brecht's poetry at the end was the final tear-jerker and served to make Brecht's socialist message more humanitarian than political.

Charity Doughnuts Emma Buchan and Oli Bateman (UV) raised £360 for the HOPEHIV charity by selling Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in the Dining Hall; they were inspired by similar success last year when they were members of Beccy Gibson's fund-raising group. Olivia Hodgkinson who now who runs the fund-raising activity on Wednesdays comments: "I was especially pleased that these two girls volunteered to do the doughnut sale a second time as they are no longer in the group but wanted to do more for this very deserving charity. Around £1300 has been raised now altogether." The work this charity does for a whole generation of African children orphaned because of the blight of HIV/AIDS can be seen on www.hopehiv.org

Also this term on the annual JEANS FOR GENES mufti day organised

by Bob Wilson, pupils and staff raised nearly £800 for charities which seek to find cures for genetic illnesses in children.

A superb Brechtian touch was having the cast in white boiler-suits with their names crudely written on, serving to emphasise that this was a real ensemble; all 31 were stars. Among the familiar faces of past productions were the versatile Jack Church, the affecting Ned Newberry and the charismatic Ian Sekalala, and it was tremendous to see IVth Formers working alongside them as equals, such as the endearingly hen-pecked Hugo Moxey with his snobbish wife, Hannah Coleridge. Jonathan Oldfield and Tommy Lyster had tremendous stage presence in their double-act as Corporal and Blockhead: two to watch as torch-bearers for the continued excellence of Cranleigh productions.

And the NORTH HOUSE CHARITY DAY raised a staggering £7,100 for the Karibuni Trust. See Dom Marcar’s account on the web-site.

For a review of the NORTH HOUSE PLAYS, see www.cranleigh.org

The group also continues to support the EnKi project, educating Kenyan children, and earlier this term West House held a cake sale as one of the fund-raising activity projects. Lucy Hollister adds: "They literally sold like hot cakes; we raised £45.25 in under ten minutes !"

Other events have included a 'guess the number of sweets in the jar' competition.

National Schools’ Equestrian Association Finals: 2007

Dan at Brands Hatch

Cranleigh riders once again excelled at the National Schools' Finals held at the All England Show Ground, Ardingly during Long Leave. With competitors from over 50 schools around the country having qualified for this prestigious event in the Schools' Equestrian Calendar, competition was going to be fierce and only the very best riders were going to find themselves in the honours.

It was with some pride, therefore, that Cranleigh returned not only as Reserve Champions in both the Novice and Open sections but with the Open Individual National Champion, Imogen Way, on her chestnut pony High Flyer IV. This individual result was even more outstanding given that Imogen was competing against riders who were, on the whole, some four years older than her. She was supported in the team competition by Cranleigh's Captain of Riding, Alice Wait on Bounty Boy, who finished in 4th place individually, and Phoebe Roberts who, on her grey mare Cherry, has only recently started competing at this height.

The Novice section of the championship was the most hotly contested of all, with 29 teams and 115 individual riders gunning for the honours.

The Cranleigh team was the fifth to go and set an outstanding score for the other teams to follow, with some excellent riding from Hattie Allison, Tom Lane, Chloe Allison and Madeleine Iafrate. This made for a very tense afternoon as they followed the progress of the other 24 teams for over three and a half hours, holding on to their lead until the very last minute when the team from Gillingham School, Kent pipped them into second by the smallest of margins, just three points.

Although the team were disappointed to have their lead snatched from them at the last minute, the result was still an outstanding one, and with two of the riders placed individually out of the 115 starters, Chloe Allison in 4th and Madeleine Iafrate in 8th, this was a fantastic achievement from one of the youngest teams in the competition.

This really was an outstanding set of results for our riders, who work hard to develop their riding alongside their major sports at Cranleigh.

They dedicate a great deal of their spare time to their riding but we should also thank their parents, without whom such success certainly would not be possible!

MCA

Dan Rozwadowski's (LVI) motorsport career started from when he was very young as his father used to race and he loved to go and watch him. This autumn he has been competing in the National T car races and consistently finishing 2nd 3rd or 4th. Over Long Leave the final races were held at Brands Hatch. Dan writes, "Testing went great and I found myself only 7 tenths of a second off the fastest lap! The first race was, luckily, dry and after quite a good qualifying performance I was starting 4th on the grid, the race was fairly close but I managed to stay in 4th place at the finish. The second race the next day was wet! A couple of times I found myself getting a little too sideways on but still, however, managed to come home 4th again!

The final race started fairly well and I was running in 5th catching 4th and 3rd slightly each lap, until the car got stuck in neutral and I was unable to find a gear. Somehow, after a quarter of the lap, I managed to hit it into a gear, but I had lost too much time to get back into the race. I got past two cars which had overtaken me whilst I had been coasting, but it was of no help to the championship!

Now I'm just focusing on next year, when I hope to be driving Formula Palmer Audi!" More on Dan's season is on www.cranleigh.org

'Everestmax...

The Longest Climb on Earth' As part of the series of Tom Avery Society lectures that Cranleigh is so fortunate to be able to host, Dom Faulkner represented his team, 'Everestmax', in front of a packed auditorium.

Through his inspirational words, the audience learned of an epic cycle journey, through eight different countries and across 5000 miles, and then to the summit of Everest, to complete the longest climb possible on Earth. Graphic pictures and fascinating video clips, coupled with Dom Faulkner's descriptions of his personal experiences and emotions, proved very thought-provoking. As someone currently considering a gap year, it should prove helpful in deciding where I would like to travel, as will his advice. Even through the pictures the warm welcomes were obvious, and he dealt with issues that only someone who has travelled widely could explain. Some of his experiences act as a warning: for example, when the cycling team were detained for riding too close to a nuclear facility! The talk was very interesting and motivating. It proved, I think, to be a great success, just like the actual journey itself, and should provide inspiration for pupils and parents alike.

Alex Knocks Them Out Alex Knox (LV) won the Surrey Junior Tennis Championship which took place in the last week of the summer holidays at Sheen. Alex was number 3 seed and won his first and second round matches comfortably. In the quarter finals, against Will Tingle from Roehampton, Alex came back from 4-0 in the first set to win 6-4, 6-2. In the semi-final he played the 5th seed, Chris Maguire, and won 6-7 6-2 7-6, in a great match, after which Alex felt “ecstatic but still exhausted, as the match took two and a half hours.”

He then had to focus on the final against Theodore Voegt, who is a full-time player at Sutton; Alex had played him before and lost 6-3 6-4. He didn't fancy his chances after losing the first set 6-4, even though he knew he was playing really well, but in the second set Alex upped his game a gear and won 6-4. Then the effects of the gruelling semi-final started to kick in and, although he started the third set really well, going 4-0 up, he felt he was running on empty as his opponent won the next three games. At 4-3 Alex then made a final surge with the support of his family and friends among the spectators and won 6-3.

This match also took two and a half hours but Alex comments. “It was definitely my best win so far and it took a long time to take in what I had achieved. I went up and collected my prize, a glass block trophy and a £40 gift voucher. More importantly, this victory will boost my ranking, possibly moving me into the top 100 in the country and top 10 in the county in the new year.”

Editor: PETER LONGSHAW - Photography: STEPHEN OWEN - Design and Typesetting: JOHN SANDFORD

Alistair White (UVI)