Pro Corda Festival

The Pro Corda Festival is an annual national music competition that celebrates chamber music, with student ensembles from across the country invited to compete and receive individual coaching with music specialists.

This year’s festival took place between January and March and four of our student chamber ensembles competed, visiting various schools to take part in the competition.

The First Year Trio (Milly Hutton, Francesca Laudicina and Conor Barr), the Third Year Trio (Lizzie Clark, Oliver De Soyres and Yena Huh) and the Fifth Year Ensemble (Sophie Bailey, Bryn Kamleh-Chapman, Maxim Dythtchenko and Ralph Hassan) visited St Catherine’s School, Bramley to compete in a qualifying round. The First and Fifth Years progressed to the semi-finals, travelling to Central Foundation Boys’ School in London. They were joined by the Second Year Trio (Jemima Mack, Clarissa Cheng and

Connie le Huray), who were unable to attend the first round in February and subsequently competed in a qualifying round, progressing as semi-finalists.

The First Year Trio progressed to the final, which took place at Brighton College, where they gave a highly impressive performance.

Whilst none of the groups were selected as winners, the Pro Corda was a fantastic opportunity to perform exciting chamber ensemble works at various locations throughout the country. All the groups received coaching with the adjudicators, who gave specialist advice and feedback. Progression to the finals was extremely competitive, so the First Year Trio did extremely well to progress this far.

We congratulate all four groups for their hard work and dedication throughout this term.

Pro Corda CEO Andrew Quartermain believes that chamber music “gives a unique and truly transformative education not just for the young musician and instrumentalist but for the young human being”, also stating that it “teaches sensitive and imaginative leadership alongside a sense of coming together to create something uniquely beautiful when the sum of collective parts becomes a magical whole of something beyond what those collective parts are.”

Mr J Lewis I Music Intern

“Language Leaders has been a huge opportunity for all of us to widen our skills and expand our leadership abilities. Our confidence has increased since we started teaching and our linguistic knowledge has improved massively through practising with students. We are all really enjoying this course – learning about teaching techniques, preparing resources and, of course, the teaching itself. Seeing the hard work pay off with the students learning more and enjoying themselves is rewarding. Overall, the course is always improving our communication skills and is an amazing experience.”

Watch this space for more news on their work next term, when our Language Leaders will be taking their skills to local primary schools to inspire a love of languages amongst the next generation of linguists!

Mrs K Pinnock I MFL