ENJOYING THE MUSIC OF RGS BERNARD TRAFFORD

ENJOYING THE MUSIC OF RGS

BY BERNARD TRAFFORD HEADMASTER (08-17)

No one was going to want me to help with sport(!), so I did what I could in the Arts beyond merely attending performances.

So it was a joy to play in the band for several big productions including Sarah Davison’s Les Misérables and Trevor Walters’ (09-13) West Side Story (that was a hard one!). I donned costume and showed off dreadfully as Mr Bumble in Oliver, Tim Clarks’ (84-17) farewell production (in which he was a brilliant Fagin). And I dressed up to play some discreet accordion in Rachael Shaw-Kew’s Under Milk Wood.

I also had great fun writing the music for several productions: daft stuff for three tubas in Rachael’s The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew; sea shanties and the like in the Collingwood piece written by Chris Goulding for the bicentenary in 2010, and turned into a magical piece of theatre by Trevor Walters, with whom I subsequently worked on a number of shows with younger students, always

I’m not sure if I have much to add on the Creative Arts for your edition. Obviously that’s my area, though, and I always thought Heads should help extra-curricularly, where they can.

put together in a fevered rush in the last week or two of the summer term. Trevor heroically directed my musical Flotsam in 2012, working that same summer miracle. And, of course, I loved supporting the Art Department (what a building they have now: I’m sure I never promised Graham Mason (89-96) quite that much space in it!). I also loved the crossover of Design Technology (now called EDT) with the art/design side, and it’s not by accident that the new building brings those two together alongside Digital Technology and Computer Science (DTCS).

As for “straight” music! It was a joy to see the standard rise as its scope widened, both inexorably! I loved working with Zlatan Fazlic for the majority of my time at RGS (he joined in 2012), and with all the music colleagues over the years. They were even kind enough to perform some of my stuff… And to let me play jazz occasionally.

Blimey! I didn’t mean to say all that!