events

QEGS Students Depart from the QEGS Music Department Maaria Rajput

Held on the 26th of April, and the very first of its kind, the QEGS Leavers’ Concert 2023 was one of the best QEGS performance nights I’ve seen in my six years here. Organised entirely by the Sixth Form Music Committee (and they didn’t miss a thing, as Mrs Addis comfortably informed) this set of performances was different in the sense that favoured informality. Lights were a little dimmer as guests clustered about tables rather than in rows to enjoy the array of solo and group pieces, featuring many musicians from the upper sixth. A particular audience favourite was the year 13 rock band’s electric take on Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze… I appreciated the neat addition of a snack bar stationed somewhere towards the back, as well as the refreshing lack of dress code*.

The QEGS Music Department is in constant fruition. The Christmas Concert fizzles into the Spring Concert, then you’d maybe encounter a Choirfest here or a Solofest there, ebbing into the Horncastle Music and Arts festival in the summer term. Then you’ve circled back to the start and before you know it, you're a leaver, strumming your last D major at your last QEGS concert of your life.

Those of us in the lower years lean far too much on the leavers, that’s for certain. I offered to help dismantle the amps and stage- tasks I realised we unknowingly delegate to the year 13s. We carried the equipment across to the art block, the waning breeze fragrant about us. The music rooms where we left the apparatus equally have a pleasant smell; I will no doubt catch a whiff of them from somewhere in ten years, and be floored by burning nostalgia.

I came into my first QEGS concert night six years ago with Müller Corner spilt over my headscarf and I came away in someone else's coat (which unfortunately had their phone in one pocket). Still, sandwiched between my two temperate mishaps was an arrestingly beautiful take of On My Own from Les Miserables that still haunts me. The only thing that has topped it since was Chamber Choir’s bewitching rendition of Northern Lights by Ola Gjeilo at the Leavers’ Concert.

Which brings us right back to the evening of Wednesday April 26th. We begin with all four harmonies in acapella. They begin to fall in and out of each other, to epitomise the Northern Lights filtering over Norway. Aakash Jansari comes in with the cello (I have never heard a lovelier sound). Melody gleans from the sopranos to the altos. Tenors discern themselves with a harmony line sometimes just half a note above the bass’ drawn out foundations to add intriguing dissonance. It took close to six months to perfect.

So I think you’d agree, QEGS Music Dept. wholeheartedly deserved the title of Lincolnshire Music Department of the Year, at the Lincolnshire Music Education Awards a matter of weeks ago. Jess Gates, a stunning clarinet player of the upper sixth and known to have strung together a talent show in three weekdays (bless) landed Young Music Maker of the Year. Hopefully we can live up to the leavers’ legacy…

*I would like to thank the kind lady on the table second to the back who told me I looked very cool in my beanie.